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FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END* + + + + + +The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Pivot of Civilization + +By Margaret Sanger + + + + +To Alice Drysdale Vickery + +Whose prophetic vision of liberated womanhood has been an inspiration + + ``I dream of a world in which the spirits of women are flames + stronger than fire, a world in which modesty has become courage + and yet remains modesty, a world in which women are as unlike + men as ever they were in the world I sought to destroy, a world + in which women shine with a loveliness of self-revelation as + enchanting as ever the old legends told, and yet a world which + would immeasurably transcend the old world in the self-sacrificing + passion of human service. I have dreamed of that world ever since + I began to dream at all.'' + +Havelock Ellis + + + + +CONTENTS + +Introduction By H. G. Wells + +Chapter +I A New Truth Emerges +II Conscripted Motherhood +III ``Children Troop Down from Heaven'' +IV The Fertility of the Feeble-Minded +V The Cruelty of Charity +VI Neglected Factors of the World Problem +VII Is Revolution the Remedy? +VIII Dangers of Cradle Competition +IX A Moral Necessity +X Science the Ally +XI Education and Expression +XII Woman and the Future + +Appendix: Principles and Aims of the American Birth Control League + + + +INTRODUCTION + +Birth control, Mrs. Sanger claims, and claims rightly, to be a +question of fundamental importance at the present time. I do not know +how far one is justified in calling it the pivot or the corner-stone +of a progressive civilization. These terms involve a criticism of +metaphors that may take us far away from the question in hand. Birth +Control is no new thing in human experience, and it has been practised +in societies of the most various types and fortunes. But there can be +little doubt that at the present time it is a test issue between two +widely different interpretations of the word civilization, and of what +is good in life and conduct. The way in which men and women range +themselves in this controversy is more simply and directly indicative +of their general intellectual quality than any other single +indication. I do not wish to imply by this that the people who oppose +are more or less intellectual than the people who advocate Birth +Control, but only that they have fundamentally contrasted general +ideas,--that, mentally, they are DIFFERENT. Very simple, very +complex, very dull and very brilliant persons may be found in either +camp, but all those in either camp have certain attitudes in common +which they share with one another, and do not share with those in the +other camp. + +There have been many definitions of civilization. Civilization is a +complexity of count less aspects, and may be validly defined in a +great number of relationships. A reader of James Harvey Robinson's +MIND IN THE MAKING will find it very reasonable to define a +civilization as a system of society-making ideas at issue with +reality. Just so far as the system of ideas meets the needs and +conditions of survival or is able to adapt itself to the needs and +conditions of survival of the society it dominates, so far will that +society continue and prosper. We are beginning to realize that in the +past and under different conditions from our own, societies have +existed with systems of ideas and with methods of thought very widely +contrasting with what we should consider right and sane to-day. The +extraordinary neolithic civilizations of the American continent that +flourished before the coming of the Europeans, seem to have got along +with concepts that involved pedantries and cruelties and a kind of +systematic unreason, which find their closest parallels to-day in the +art and writings of certain types of lunatic. There are collections +of drawings from English and American asylums extraordinarily parallel +in their spirit and quality with the Maya inscriptions of Central +America. Yet these neolithic American societies got along for +hundreds and perhaps thousands of years. they respected seed-time and +harvest, they bred and they maintained a grotesque and terrible order. +And they produced quite beautiful works of art. Yet their surplus of +population was disposed of by an organization of sacrificial slaughter +unparalleled in the records of mankind. Many of the institutions that +seemed most normal and respectable to them, filled the invading +Europeans with perplexity and horror. + +When we realize clearly this possibility of civilizations being based +on very different sets of moral ideas and upon different intellectual +methods, we are better able to appreciate the profound significance of +the schism in our modern community, which gives us side by side, +honest and intelligent people who regard Birth Control as something +essentially sweet, sane, clean, desirable and necessary, and others +equally honest and with as good a claim to intelligence who regard it +as not merely unreasonable and unwholesome, but as intolerable and +abominable. We are living not in a simple and complete civilization, +but in a conflict of at least two civilizations, based on entirely +different fundamental ideas, pursuing different methods and with +different aims and ends. + +I will call one of these civilizations our Traditional or +Authoritative Civilization. It rests upon the thing that is, and upon +the thing that has been. It insists upon respect for custom and +usage; it discourages criticism and enquiry. It is very ancient and +conservative, or, going beyond conservation, it is reactionary. The +vehement hostility of many Catholic priests and prelates towards new +views of human origins, and new views of moral questions, has led many +careless thinkers to identify this old traditional civilization with +Christianity, but that identification ignores the strongly +revolutionary and initiatory spirit that has always animated +Christianity, and is untrue even to the realities of orthodox Catholic +teaching. The vituperation of individual Catholics must not be +confused with the deliberate doctrines of the Church which have, on +the whole, been conspicuously cautious and balanced and sane in these +matters. The ideas and practices of the Old Civilization are older +and more widespread than and not identifiable with either Christian or +Catholic culture, and it will be a great misfortune if the issues +between the Old Civilization and the New are allowed to slip into the +deep ruts of religious controversies that are only accidentally and +intermittently parallel. + +Contrasted with the ancient civilization, with the Traditional +disposition, which accepts institutions and moral values as though +they were a part of nature, we have what I may call--with an evident +bias in its favour--the civilization of enquiry, of experimental +knowledge, Creative and Progressive Civilization. The first great +outbreak of the spirit of this civilization was in republican Greece; +the martyrdom of Socrates, the fearless Utopianism of Plato, the +ambitious encyclopaedism of Aristotle, mark the dawn of a new courage +and a new wilfulness in human affairs. The fear of set limitations, +of punitive and restrictive laws imposed by Fate upon human life was +visibly fading in human minds. These names mark the first clear +realization that to a large extent, and possibly to an illimitable +extent, man's moral and social life and his general destiny could be +seized upon and controlled by man. But--he must have knowledge. Said +the Ancient Civilization--and it says it still through a multitude of +vigorous voices and harsh repressive acts: ``Let man learn his duty +and obey.'' Says the New Civilization, with ever-increasing +confidence: ``Let man know, and trust him.'' + +For long ages, the Old Civilization kept the New subordinate, +apologetic and ineffective, but for the last two centuries, the New +has fought its way to a position of contentious equality. The two go +on side by side, jostling upon a thousand issues. The world changes, +the conditions of life change rapidly, through that development of +organized science which is the natural method of the New Civilization. +The old tradition demands that national loyalties and ancient +belligerence should continue. The new has produced means of +communication that break down the pens and separations of human life +upon which nationalist emotion depends. The old tradition insists +upon its ancient blood-letting of war; the new knowledge carries that +war to undreamt of levels of destruction. The ancient system needed +an unrestricted breeding to meet the normal waste of life through war, +pestilence, and a multitude of hitherto unpreventable diseases. The +new knowledge sweeps away the venerable checks of pestilence and +disease, and confronts us with the congestions and explosive dangers +of an over-populated world. The old tradition demands a special +prolific class doomed to labor and subservience; the new points to +mechanism and to scientific organization as a means of escape from +this immemorial subjugation. Upon every main issue in life, there is +this quarrel between the method of submission and the method of +knowledge. More and more do men of science and intelligent people +generally realize the hopelessness of pouring new wine into old +bottles. More and more clearly do they grasp the significance of the +Great Teacher's parable. + +The New Civilization is saying to the Old now: ``We cannot go on +making power for you to spend upon international conflict. You must +stop waving flags and bandying insults. You must organize the Peace of +the World; you must subdue yourselves to the Federation of all +mankind. And we cannot go on giving you health, freedom, enlargement, +limitless wealth, if all our gifts to you are to be swamped by an +indiscriminate torrent of progeny. We want fewer and better children +who can be reared up to their full possibilities in unencumbered +homes, and we cannot make the social life and the world-peace we are +determined to make, with the ill-bred, ill-trained swarms of inferior +citizens that you inflict upon us.'' And there at the passionate and +crucial question, this essential and fundamental question, whether +procreation is still to be a superstitious and often disastrous +mystery, undertaken in fear and ignorance, reluctantly and under the +sway of blind desires, or whether it is to become a deliberate +creative act, the two civilizations join issue now. It is a conflict +from which it is almost impossible to abstain. Our acts, our way of +living, our social tolerance, our very silences will count in this +crucial decision between the old and the new. + +In a plain and lucid style without any emotional appeals, Mrs. +Margaret Sanger sets out the case of the new order against the old. +There have been several able books published recently upon the +question of Birth Control, from the point of view of a woman's +personal life, and from the point of view of married happiness, but I +do not think there has been any book as yet, popularly accessible, +which presents this matter from the point of view of the public good, +and as a necessary step to the further improvement of human life as a +whole. I am inclined to think that there has hitherto been rather too +much personal emotion spent upon this business and far too little +attention given to its broader aspects. Mrs. Sanger with her +extraordinary breadth of outlook and the real scientific quality of +her mind, has now redressed the balance. She has lifted this question +from out of the warm atmosphere of troubled domesticity in which it +has hitherto been discussed, to its proper level of a predominantly +important human affair. + +H.G. Wells +Easton Glebe, +Dunmow, +Essex., England + + + +THE PIVOT OF CIVILIZATION + + + +CHAPTER I: A New Truth Emerges + + Be not ashamed, women, your privilege encloses the + rest, and is the exit of the rest, + You are the gates of the body, and you are the gates of + the soul. + +Walt Whitman + + +This book aims to be neither the first word on the tangled problems of +human society to-day, nor the last. My aim has been to emphasize, by +the use of concrete and challenging examples and neglected facts, the +need of a new approach to individual and social problems. Its central +challenge is that civilization, in any true sense of the word, is +based upon the control and guidance of the great natural instinct of +Sex. Mastery of this force is possible only through the instrument of +Birth Control. + +It may be objected that in the following pages I have rushed in where +academic scholars have feared to tread, and that as an active +propagandist I am lacking in the scholarship and documentary +preparation to undertake such a stupendous task. My only defense is +that, from my point of view at least, too many are already studying +and investigating social problems from without, with a sort of +Olympian detachment. And on the other hand, too few of those who are +engaged in this endless war for human betterment have found the time +to give to the world those truths not always hidden but practically +unquarried, which may be secured only after years of active service. + +Of late, we have been treated to accounts written by well-meaning +ladies and gentlemen who have assumed clever disguises and have gone +out to work--for a week or a month--among the proletariat. But can we +thus learn anything new of the fundamental problems of working men, +working women, working children? Something, perhaps, but not those +great central problems of Hunger and Sex. We have been told that only +those who themselves have suffered the pangs of starvation can truly +understand Hunger. You might come into the closest contact with a +starving man; yet, if you were yourself well-fed, no amount of +sympathy could give you actual insight into the psychology of his +suffering. This suggests an objective and a subjective approach to all +social problems. Whatever the weakness of the subjective (or, if you +prefer, the feminine) approach, it has at least the virtue that its +conclusions are tested by experience. Observation of facts about you, +intimate subjective reaction to such facts, generate in your mind +certain fundamental convictions,--truths you can ignore no more than +you can ignore such truths as come as the fruit of bitter but valuable +personal experience. + +Regarding myself, I may say that my experience in the course of the +past twelve or fifteen years has been of a type to force upon me +certain convictions that demand expression. For years I had believed +that the solution of all our troubles was to be found in well-defined +programmes of political and legislative action. At first, I +concentrated my whole attention upon these, only to discover that +politicians and law-makers are just as confused and as much at a loss +in solving fundamental problems as anyone else. And I am speaking +here not so much of the corrupt and ignorant politician as of those +idealists and reformers who think that by the ballot society may be +led to an earthly paradise. They may honestly desire and intend to do +great things. They may positively glow--before election--with +enthusiasm at the prospect they imagine political victory may open to +them. Time after time, I was struck by the change in their attitude +after the briefest enjoyment of this illusory power. Men are elected +during some wave of reform, let us say, elected to legislate into +practical working existence some great ideal. They want to do big +things; but a short time in office is enough to show the political +idealist that he can accomplish nothing, that his reform must be +debased and dragged into the dust, so that even if it becomes enacted, +it may be not merely of no benefit, but a positive evil. It is +scarcely necessary to emphasize this point. It is an accepted +commonplace of American politics. So much of life, so large a part of +all our social problems, moreover, remains untouched by political and +legislative action. This is an old truth too often ignored by those +who plan political campaigns upon the most superficial knowledge of +human nature. + +My own eyes were opened to the limitations of political action when, +as an organizer for a political group in New York, I attended by +chance a meeting of women laundry-workers who were on strike. We +believed we could help these women with a legislative measure and +asked their support. ``Oh! that stuff!'' exclaimed one of these +women. ``Don't you know that we women might be dead and buried if we +waited for politicians and lawmakers to right our wrongs?'' This set +me to thinking--not merely of the immediate problem--but to asking +myself how much any male politician could understand of the wrongs +inflicted upon poor working women. + +I threw the weight of my study and activity into the economic and +industrial struggle. Here I discovered men and women fired with the +glorious vision of a new world, of a proletarian world emancipated, a +Utopian world,--it glowed in romantic colours for the majority of +those with whom I came in closest contact. The next step, the +immediate step, was another matter, less romantic and too often less +encouraging. In their ardor, some of the labor leaders of that period +almost convinced us that the millennium was just around the corner. +Those were the pre-war days of dramatic strikes. But even when most +under the spell of the new vision, the sight of the overburdened wives +of the strikers, with their puny babies and their broods of under-fed +children, made us stop and think of a neglected factor in the march +toward our earthly paradise. It was well enough to ask the poor men +workers to carry on the battle against economic injustice. But what +results could be expected when they were forced in addition to carry +the burden of their ever-growing families? This question loomed large +to those of us who came into intimate contact with the women and +children. We saw that in the final analysis the real burden of +economic and industrial warfare was thrust upon the frail, all-too- +frail shoulders of the children, the very babies--the coming +generation. In their wan faces, in their undernourished bodies, would +be indelibly written the bitter defeat of their parents. + +The eloquence of those who led the underpaid and half-starved workers +could no longer, for me, at least, ring with conviction. Something +more than the purely economic interpretation was involved. The bitter +struggle for bread, for a home and material comfort, was but one phase +of the problem. There was another phase, perhaps even more +fundamental, that had been absolutely neglected by the adherents of +the new dogmas. That other phase was the driving power of instinct, a +power uncontrolled and unnoticed. The great fundamental instinct of +sex was expressing itself in these ever-growing broods, in the +prosperity of the slum midwife and her colleague the slum undertaker. +In spite of all my sympathy with the dream of liberated Labor, I was +driven to ask whether this urging power of sex, this deep instinct, +was not at least partially responsible, along with industrial +injustice, for the widespread misery of the world. + +To find an answer to this problem which at that point in my experience +I could not solve, I determined to study conditions in Europe. Perhaps +there I might discover a new approach, a great illumination. Just +before the outbreak of the war, I visited France, Spain, Germany and +Great Britain. Everywhere I found the same dogmas and prejudices +among labor leaders, the same intense but limited vision, the same +insistence upon the purely economic phases of human nature, the same +belief that if the problem of hunger were solved, the question of the +women and children would take care of itself. In this attitude I +discovered, then, what seemed to me to be purely masculine reasoning; +and because it was purely masculine, it could at best be but half +true. Feminine insight must be brought to bear on all questions; and +here, it struck me, the fallacy of the masculine, the all-too- +masculine, was brutally exposed. I was encouraged and strengthened in +this attitude by the support of certain leaders who had studied human +nature and who had reached the same conclusion: that civilization +could not solve the problem of Hunger until it recognized the titanic +strength of the sexual instinct. In Spain, I found that Lorenzo +Portet, who was carrying on the work of the martyred Francisco Ferrer, +had reached this same conclusion. In Italy, Enrico Malatesta, the +valiant leader who was after the war to play so dramatic a r™le, was +likewise combating the current dogma of the orthodox Socialists. In +Berlin, Rudolph Rocker was engaged in the thankless task of puncturing +the articles of faith of the orthodox Marxian religion. It is quite +needless to add that these men who had probed beneath the surface of +the problem and had diagnosed so much more completely the complex +malady of contemporary society were intensely disliked by the +superficial theorists of the neo-Marxian School. + +The gospel of Marx had, however, been too long and too thoroughly +inculcated into the minds of millions of workers in Europe, to be +discarded. It is a flattering doctrine, since it teaches the laborer +that all the fault is with someone else, that he is the victim of +circumstances, and not even a partner in the creation of his own and +his child's misery. Not without significance was the additional +discovery that I made. I found that the Marxian influence tended to +lead workers to believe that, irrespective of the health of the poor +mothers, the earning capacity of the wage-earning fathers, or the +upbringing of the children, increase of the proletarian family was a +benefit, not a detriment to the revolutionary movement. The greater +the number of hungry mouths, the emptier the stomachs, the more +quickly would the ``Class War'' be precipitated. The greater the +increase in population among the proletariat, the greater the +incentive to revolution. This may not be sound Marxian theory; but it +is the manner in which it is popularly accepted. It is the popular +belief, wherever the Marxian influence is strong. This I found +especially in England and Scotland. In speaking to groups of +dockworkers on strike in Glasgow, and before the communist and co- +operative guilds throughout England, I discovered a prevailing +opposition to the recognition of sex as a factor in the perpetuation +of poverty. The leaders and theorists were immovable in their +opposition. But when once I succeeded in breaking through the surface +opposition of the rank and file of the workers, I found that they were +willing to recognize the power of this neglected factor in their +lives. + +So central, so fundamental in the life of every man and woman is this +problem that they need be taught no elaborate or imposing theory to +explain their troubles. To approach their problems by the avenue of +sex and reproduction is to reveal at once their fundamental relations +to the whole economic and biological structure of society. Their +interest is immediately and completely awakened. But always, as I +soon discovered, the ideas and habits of thought of these submerged +masses have been formed through the Press, the Church, through +political institutions, all of which had built up a conspiracy of +silence around a subject that is of no less vital importance than that +of Hunger. A great wall separates the masses from those imperative +truths that must be known and flung wide if civilization is to be +saved. As currently constituted, Church, Press, Education seem to-day +organized to exploit the ignorance and the prejudices of the masses, +rather than to light their way to self-salvation. + +Such was the situation in 1914, when I returned to America, +determined, since the exclusively masculine point of view had +dominated too long, that the other half of the truth should be made +known. The Birth Control movement was launched because it was in this +form that the whole relation of woman and child--eternal emblem of the +future of society--could be more effectively dramatized. The amazing +growth of this movement dates from the moment when in my home a small +group organized the first Birth Control League. Since then we have +been criticized for our choice of the term ``Birth Control'' to +express the idea of modern scientific contraception. I have yet to +hear any criticism of this term that is not based upon some false and +hypocritical sense of modesty, or that does not arise out of a semi- +prurient misunderstanding of its aim. On the other hand: nothing +better expresses the idea of purposive, responsible, and self-directed +guidance of the reproductive powers. + +Those critics who condemn Birth Control as a negative, destructive +idea, concerned only with self-gratification, might profitably open +the nearest dictionary for a definition of ``control.'' There they +would discover that the verb ``control'' means to exercise a +directing, guiding, or restraining influence;--to direct, to regulate, +to counteract. Control is guidance, direction, foresight. it implies +intelligence, forethought and responsibility. They will find in the +Standard Dictionary a quotation from Lecky to the effect that, ``The +greatest of all evils in politics is power without control.'' In what +phase of life is not ``power without control'' an evil? Birth +Control, therefore, means not merely the limitation of births, but the +application of intelligent guidance over the reproductive power. It +means the substitution of reason and intelligence for the blind play +of instinct. + +The term ``Birth Control'' had the immense practical advantage of +compressing into two short words the answer to the inarticulate +demands of millions of men and women in all countries. At the time +this slogan was formulated, I had not yet come to the complete +realization of the great truth that had been thus crystallized. It +was the response to the overwhelming, heart-breaking appeals that came +by every mail for aid and advice, which revealed a great truth that +lay dormant, a truth that seemed to spring into full vitality almost +over night--that could never again be crushed to earth! + + Nor could I then have realized the number and the power of the +enemies who were to be aroused into activity by this idea. So +completely was I dominated by this conviction of the efficacy of +``control,'' that I could not until later realize the extent of the +sacrifices that were to be exacted of me and of those who supported my +campaign. The very idea of Birth Control resurrected the spirit of +the witch-hunters of Salem. Could they have usurped the power, they +would have burned us at the stake. Lacking that power, they used the +weapon of suppression, and invoked medieval statutes to send us to +jail. These tactics had an effect the very opposite to that intended. +They demonstrated the vitality of the idea of Birth Control, and acted +as counter-irritant on the actively intelligent sections of the +American community. Nor was the interest aroused confined merely to +America. The neo-Malthusian movement in Great Britain with its +history of undaunted bravery, came to our support; and I had the +comfort of knowing that the finest minds of England did not hesitate a +moment in the expression of their sympathy and support. + + In America, on the other hand, I found from the beginning until very +recently that the so-called intellectuals exhibited a curious and +almost inexplicable reticence in supporting Birth Control. They even +hesitated to voice any public protest against the campaign to crush us +which was inaugurated and sustained by the most reactionary and +sinister forces in American life. It was not inertia or any lack of +interest on the part of the masses that stood in our way. It was the +indifference of the intellectual leaders. + +Writers, teachers, ministers, editors, who form a class dictating, if +not creating, public opinion, are, in this country, singularly +inhibited or unconscious of their true function in the community. One +of their first duties, it is certain, should be to champion the +constitutional right of free speech and free press, to welcome any +idea that tends to awaken the critical attention of the great American +public. But those who reveal themselves as fully cognizant of this +public duty are in the minority, and must possess more than average +courage to survive the enmity such an attitude provokes. + +One of the chief aims of the present volume is to stimulate American +intellectuals to abandon the mental habits which prevent them from +seeing human nature as a whole, instead of as something that can be +pigeonholed into various compartments or classes. Birth Control +affords an approach to the study of humanity because it cuts through +the limitations of current methods. It is economic, biological, +psychological and spiritual in its aspects. It awakens the vision of +mankind moving and changing, of humanity growing and developing, +coming to fruition, of a race creative, flowering into beautiful +expression through talent and genius. + +As a social programme, Birth Control is not merely concerned with +population questions. In this respect, it is a distinct step in +advance of earlier Malthusian doctrines, which concerned themselves +chiefly with economics and population. Birth Control concerns itself +with the spirit no less than the body. It looks for the liberation of +the spirit of woman and through woman of the child. To-day motherhood +is wasted, penalized, tortured. Children brought into the world by +unwilling mother suffer an initial handicap that cannot be measured by +cold statistics. Their lives are blighted from the start. To +substantiate this fact, I have chosen to present the conclusions of +reports on Child Labor and records of defect and delinquency published +by organizations with no bias in favour of Birth Control. The evidence +is before us. It crowds in upon us from all sides. But prior to this +new approach, no attempt had been made to correlate the effects of the +blind and irresponsible play of the sexual instinct with its deep- +rooted causes. + +The duty of the educator and the intellectual creator of public +opinion is, in this connection, of the greatest importance. For +centuries official moralists, priests, clergymen and teachers, +statesmen and politicians have preached the doctrine of glorious and +divine fertility. To-day, we are confronted with the world-wide +spectacle of the realization of this doctrine. It is not without +significance that the moron and the imbecile set the pace in living up +to this teaching, and that the intellectuals, the educators, the +archbishops, bishops, priests, who are most insistent on it, are the +staunchest adherents in their own lives of celibacy and non-fertility. +It is time to point out to the champions of unceasing and +indiscriminate fertility the results of their teaching. + +One of the greatest difficulties in giving to the public a book of +this type is the impossibility of keeping pace with the events and +changes of a movement that is now, throughout the world, striking root +and growing. The changed attitude of the American Press indicates +that enlightened public opinion no longer tolerates a policy of +silence upon a question of the most vital importance. Almost +simultaneously in England and America, two incidents have broken +through the prejudice and the guarded silence of centuries. At the +church Congress in Birmingham, October 12, 1921, Lord Dawson, the +king's physician, in criticizing the report of the Lambeth Conference +concerning Birth Control, delivered an address defending this +practice. Of such bravery and eloquence that it could not be ignored, +this address electrified the entire British public. It aroused a +storm of abuse, and yet succeeded, as no propaganda could, in +mobilizing the forces of progress and intelligence in the support of +the cause. + +Just one month later, the First American Birth Control Conference +culminated in a significant and dramatic incident. At the close of +the conference a mass meeting was scheduled in the Town Hall, New York +City, to discuss the morality of Birth Control. Mr. Harold Cox, +editor of the Edinburgh Review, who had come to New York to attend the +conference, was to lead the discussion. It seemed only natural for us +to call together scientists, educators, members of the medical +profession, and theologians of all denominations, to ask their opinion +upon this uncertain and important phase of the controversy. Letters +were sent to eminent men and women in different parts of the world. +In this letter we asked the following questions:-- + + 1. Is over-population a menace to the peace of the world? + 2. Would the legal dissemination of scientific Birth Control + information, through the medium of clinics by the medical + profession, be the most logical method of checking the problem + of over-population? + 3. Would knowledge of Birth Control change the moral attitude of + men and women toward the marriage bond, or lower the moral + standards of the youth of the country? + 4. Do you believe that knowledge which enables parents to limit + their families will make for human happiness, and raise the + moral, social and intellectual standards of population? + +We sent this questionnaire not only to those who we thought might +agree with us, but we sent it also to our known opponents. + +When I arrived at the Town Hall the entrance was guarded by policemen. +They told me there would be no meeting. Before my arrival r +executives had been greeted by Monsignor Dineen, secretary of +Archbishop Hayes, of the Roman Catholic archdiocese, who informed them +that the meeting would be prohibited on the ground that it was +contrary to public morals. The police had closed the doors. When +they opened them to permit the exit of the large audience which had +gathered, Mr. Cox and I entered. I attempted to exercise my +constitutional right of free speech, but was prohibited and arrested. +Miss Mary Winsor, who protested against this unwarranted arrest, was +likewise dragged off to the police station. The case was dismissed +the following morning. The ecclesiastic instigators of the affair +were conspicuous by their absence from the police court. But the +incident was enough to expose the opponents of Birth Control and the +extreme methods they used to combat our progress. The case was too +flagrant, too gross an affront, to pass unnoticed by the newspapers. +The progress of our movement was indicated in the changed attitude of +the American Press, which had perceived the danger to the public of +the unlawful tactics used by the enemies of Birth Control in +preventing open discussion of a vital question. + +No social idea has inspired its advocates with more bravery, tenacity, +and courage than Birth Control. From the early days of Francis Place +and Richard Carlile, to those of the Drysdales and Edward Trulove, of +Bradlaugh and Mrs. Annie Besant, its advocates have faced imprisonment +and ostracism. In the whole history of the English movement, there +has been no more courageous figure than that of the venerable Alice +Drysdale Vickery, the undaunted torch-bearer who has bridged the +silence of forty-four years--since the Bradlaugh-Besant trial. She +stands head and shoulders above the professional feminists. Serenely +has she withstood jeers and jests. To-day, she continues to point out +to the younger generation which is devoted to newer palliatives the +fundamental relation between Sex and Hunger. + +The First American Birth Control Conference, held at the same time as +the Washington Conference for the Limitation of Armaments, marks a +turning-point in our approach to social problems. The Conference made +evident the fact that in every field of scientific and social +endeavour the most penetrating thinkers are now turning to the +consideration of our problem as a fundamental necessity to American +civilization. They are coming to see that a QUALITATIVE factor as +opposed to a QUANTITATIVE one is of primary importance in dealing with +the great masses of humanity. + +Certain fundamental convictions should be made clear here. The +programme for Birth. Control is not a charity. It is not aiming to +interfere in the private lives of poor people, to tell them how many +children they should have, nor to sit in judgment upon their fitness +to become parents. It aims, rather, to awaken responsibility, to +answer the demand for a scientific means by which and through which +each human life may be self-directed and self-controlled. The +exponent of Birth Control, in short, is convinced that social +regeneration, no less than individual regeneration, must come from +within. Every potential parent, and especially every potential +mother, must be brought to an acute realization of the primary and +individual responsibility of bringing children into this world. Not +until the parents of this world are given control over their +reproductive faculties will it be possible to improve the quality of +the generations of the future, or even to maintain civilization at its +present level. Only when given intelligent mastery of the procreative +powers can the great mass of humanity be aroused to a realization of +responsibility of parenthood. We have come to the conclusion, based +on widespread investigation and experience, that education for +parenthood must be based upon the needs and demands of the people +themselves. An idealistic code of sexual ethics, imposed from above, +a set of rules devised by high-minded theorists who fail to take into +account the living conditions and desires of the masses, can never be +of the slightest value in effecting change in the customs of the +people. Systems so imposed in the past have revealed their woeful +inability to prevent the sexual and racial chaos into which the world +has drifted. + +The universal demand for practical education in Birth Control is one +of the most hopeful signs that the masses themselves to-day possess +the divine spark of regeneration. It remains for the courageous and +the enlightened to answer this demand, to kindle the spark, to direct +a thorough education in sex hygiene based upon this intense interest. + +Birth Control is thus the entering wedge for the educator. In +answering the needs of these thousands upon thousands of submerged +mothers, it is possible to use their interest as the foundation for +education in prophylaxis, hygiene and infant welfare. The potential +mother can then be shown that maternity need not be slavery but may be +the most effective avenue to self-development and self-realization. +Upon this basis only may we improve the quality of the race. + +The lack of balance between the birth-rate of the ``unfit'' and the +``fit,'' admittedly the greatest present menace to the civilization, +can never be rectified by the inauguration of a cradle competition +between these two classes. The example of the inferior classes, the +fertility of the feeble-minded, the mentally defective, the poverty- +stricken, should not be held up for emulation to the mentally and +physically fit, and therefore less fertile, parents of the educated +and well-to-do classes. On the contrary, the most urgent problem to- +day is how to limit and discourage the over-fertility of the mentally +and physically defective. Possibly drastic and Spartan methods may be +forced upon American society if it continues complacently to encourage +the chance and chaotic breeding that has resulted from our stupid, +cruel sentimentalism. + +To effect the salvation of the generations of the future--nay, of the +generations of to-day--our greatest need, first of all, is the ability +to face the situation without flinching; to cooperate in the formation +of a code of sexual ethics based upon a thorough biological and +psychological understanding of human nature; and then to answer the +questions and the needs of the people with all the intelligence and +honesty at our command. If we can summon the bravery to do this, we +shall best be serving the pivotal interests of civilization. + +To conclude this introduction: my initiation, as I have confessed, was +primarily an emotional one. My interest in Birth Control was awakened +by experience. Research and investigation have followed. Our effort +has been to raise our program from the plane of the emotional to the +plane of the scientific. Any social progress, it is my belief, must +purge itself of sentimentalism and pass through the crucible of +science. We are willing to submit Birth Control to this test. It is +part of the purpose of this book to appeal to the scientist for aid, +to arouse that interest which will result in widespread research and +investigation. I believe that my personal experience with this idea +must be that of the race at large. We must temper our emotion and +enthusiasm with the impersonal determination of science. We must +unite in the task of creating an instrument of steel, strong but +supple, if we are to triumph finally in the war for human +emancipation. + + + +CHAPTER II: Conscripted Motherhood + + ``Their poor, old ravaged and stiffened faces, their poor, + old bodies dried up with ceaseless toil, their patient souls + made me weep. They are our conscripts. They are the venerable + ones whom we should reverence. All the mystery of womanhood + seems incarnated in their ugly being--the Mothers! the Mothers! + Ye are all one!'' + +From the Letters of William James + + +Motherhood, which is not only the oldest but the most important +profession in the world, has received few of the benefits of +civilization. It is a curious fact that a civilization devoted to +mother-worship, that publicly professes a worship of mother and child, +should close its eyes to the appalling waste of human life and human +energy resulting from those dire consequences of leaving the whole +problem of child-bearing to chance and blind instinct. It would be +untrue to say that among the civilized nations of the world to-day, +the profession of motherhood remains in a barbarous state. The bitter +truth is that motherhood, among the larger part of our population, +does not rise to the level of the barbarous or the primitive. +Conditions of life among the primitive tribes were rude enough and +severe enough to prevent the unhealthy growth of sentimentality, and +to discourage the irresponsible production of defective children. +Moreover, there is ample evidence to indicate that even among the most +primitive peoples the function of maternity was recognized as of +primary and central importance to the community. + +If we define civilization as increased and increasing responsibility +based on vision and foresight, it becomes painfully evident that the +profession of motherhood as practised to-day is in no sense civilized. +Educated people derive their ideas of maternity for the most part, +either from the experience of their own set, or from visits to +impressive hospitals where women of the upper classes receive the +advantages of modern science and modern nursing. From these charming +pictures they derive their complacent views of the beauty of +motherhood and their confidence for the future of the race. The other +side of the picture is revealed only to the trained investigator, to +the patient and impartial observer who visits not merely one or two +``homes of the poor,'' but makes detailed studies of town after town, +obtains the history of each mother, and finally correlates and +analyzes this evidence. Upon such a basis are we able to draw +conclusions concerning this strange business of bringing children into +the world. + +Every year I receive thousands of letters from women in all parts of +America, desperate appeals to aid them to extricate themselves from +the trap of compulsory maternity. Lest I be accused of bias and +exaggeration in drawing my conclusions from these painful human +documents, I prefer to present a number of typical cases recorded in +the reports of the United States Government, and in the evidence of +trained and impartial investigators of social agencies more generally +opposed to the doctrine of Birth Control than biased in favor of it. + +A perusal of the reports on infant mortality in widely varying +industrial centers of the United States, published during the past +decade by the Children's Bureau of the United States Department of +Labor, forces us to a realization of the immediate need of detailed +statistics concerning the practice and results of uncontrolled +breeding. Some such effort as this has been made by the Galton +Laboratory of National Eugenics in Great Britain. The Children's +Bureau reports only incidentally present this impressive evidence. +They fail to coordinate it. While there is always the danger of +drawing giant conclusions from pigmy premises, here is overwhelming +evidence concerning irresponsible parenthood that is ignored by +governmental and social agencies. + +I have chosen a small number of typical cases from these reports. +Though drawn from widely varying sources, they all emphasize the +greatest crime of modern civilization--that of permitting motherhood +to be left to blind chance, and to be mainly a function of the most +abysmally ignorant and irresponsible classes of the community. + +Here is a fairly typical case from Johnstown, Pennsylvania. A woman +of thirty- eight years had undergone thirteen pregnancies in seventeen +years. Of eleven live births and two premature stillbirths, only two +children were alive at the time of the government agent's visit. The +second to eighth, the eleventh and the thirteenth had died of bowel +trouble, at ages ranging from three weeks to four months. The only +cause of these deaths the mother could give was that ``food did not +agree with them.'' She confessed quite frankly that she believed in +feeding babies, and gave them everything anybody told her to give +them. She began to give them at the age of one month, bread, +potatoes, egg, crackers, etc. For the last baby that died, this mother +had bought a goat and gave its milk to the baby; the goat got sick, +but the mother continued to give her baby its milk until the goat went +dry. Moreover, she directed the feeding of her daughter's baby until +it died at the age of three months. ``On account of the many children +she had had, the neighbors consider her an authority on baby care.'' + +Lest this case be considered too tragically ridiculous to be accepted +as typical, the reader may verify it with an almost interminable list +of similar cases.[1] Parental irresponsibility is significantly +illustrated in another case: + +A mother who had four live births and two stillbirths in twelve years +lost all of her babies during their first year. She was so anxious +that at least one child should live that she consulted a physician +concerning the care of the last one. ``Upon his advice,'' to quote +the government report, ``she gave up her twenty boarders immediately +after the child's birth, and devoted all her time to it. Thinks she +did not stop her hard work soon enough; says she has always worked too +hard, keeping boarders in this country, and cutting wood and carrying +it and water on her back in the old country. Also says the carrying of +water and cases of beer in this country is a great strain on her.'' +But the illuminating point in this case is that the father was furious +because all the babies died. To show his disrespect for the wife who +could only give birth to babies that died, he wore a red necktie to +the funeral of the last. Yet this woman, the government agent reports, +would follow and profit by any instruction that might be given her. + +It is true that the cases reported from Johnstown, Pennsylvania, do +not represent completely ``Americanized'' families. This lack does +not prevent them, however, by their unceasing fertility from producing +the Americans of to-morrow. Of the more immediate conditions +surrounding child-birth, we are presented with this evidence, given by +one woman concerning the birth of her last child: + +On five o'clock on Wednesday evening she went to her sister's house to +return a washboard, after finishing a day's washing. The baby was +born while she was there. Her sister was too young to aid her in any +way. She was not accustomed to a midwife, she confessed. She cut the +cord herself, washed the new-born baby at her sister's house, walked +home, cooked supper for her boarders, and went to bed by eight +o'clock. The next day she got up and ironed. This tired her out, she +said, so she stayed in bed for two whole days. She milked cows the day +after the birth of the baby and sold the milk as well. Later in the +week, when she became tired, she hired someone to do that portion of +her work. This woman, we are further informed, kept cows, chickens, +and lodgers, and earned additional money by doing laundry and +charwork. At times her husband deserted her. His earnings amounted +to $1.70 a day, while a fifteen-year-old son earned $1.10 in a coal +mine. + +One searches in vain for some picture of sacred motherhood, as +depicted in popular plays and motion pictures, something more normal +and encouraging. Then one comes to the bitter realization that these, +in very truth, are the ``normal'' cases, not the exceptions. The +exceptions are apt to indicate, instead, the close relationship of +this irresponsible and chance parenthood to the great social problems +of feeble-mindedness, crime and syphilis. + +Nor is this type of motherhood confined to newly arrived immigrant +mothers, as a government report from Akron, Ohio, sufficiently +indicates. In this city, the government agents discovered that more +than five hundred mothers were ignorant of the accepted principles of +infant feeding, or, if familiar with them, did not practise them. +``This ignorance or indifference was not confined to foreign-born +mothers....A native mother reported that she gave her two-weeks-old +baby ice cream, and that before his sixth month, he was sitting at the +table `eating everything.''' This was in a town in which there were +comparatively few cases of extreme poverty. + +The degradation of motherhood, the damnation of the next generation +before it is born, is exposed in all its catastrophic misery, in the +reports of the National Consumers' League. In her report of living +conditions among night-working mothers in thirty-nine textile mills in +Rhode Island, based on exhaustive studies, Mrs. Florence Kelley +describes the ``normal'' life of these women: + +``When the worker, cruelly tired from ten hours' work, comes home in +the early morning, she usually scrambles together breakfast for the +family. Eating little or nothing herself, and that hastily, she +tumbles into bed--not the immaculate bed in an airy bed-room with dark +shades, but one still warm from its night occupants, in a stuffy +little bed-room, darkened imperfectly if at all. After sleeping +exhaustedly for an hour perhaps she bestirs herself to get the +children off to school, or care for insistent little ones, too young +to appreciate that mother is tired out and must sleep. Perhaps later +in the forenoon, she again drops into a fitful sleep, or she may have +to wait until after dinner. There is the midday meal to get, and, if +her husband cannot come home, his dinner-pail to pack with a hot lunch +to be sent or carried to him. If he is not at home, the lunch is +rather a makeshift. The midday meal is scarcely over before supper +must be thought of. This has to be eaten hurriedly before the family +are ready, for the mother must be in the mill at work, by 6, 6:30 or 7 +P.M....Many women in their inadequate English, summed up their daily +routine by, ``Oh, me all time tired. TOO MUCH WORK, TOO MUCH BABY, +TOO LITTLE SLEEP!'' + +``Only sixteen of the 166 married women were without children; thirty- +two had three or more; twenty had children on year old or under. +There were 160 children under school-age, below six years, and 246 of +school age.'' + +``A woman in ordinary circumstances,'' adds this impartial +investigator, ``with a husband and three children, if she does her own +work, feels that her hands are full. How these mill-workers, many of +them frail-looking, and many with confessedly poor health, can ever do +two jobs is a mystery, when they are seen in their homes dragging +about, pale, hollow-eyed and listless, often needlessly sharp and +impatient with the children. These children are not only not +mothered, never cherished, they are nagged and buffeted. The mothers +are not superwomen, and like all human beings, they have a certain +amount of strength and when that breaks, their nerves suffer.'' + +We are presented with a vivid picture of one of these slave-mothers: +a woman of thirty-eight who looks at least fifty with her worn, +furrowed face. Asked why she had been working at night for the past +two years, she pointed to a six-months old baby she was carrying, to +the five small children swarming about her, and answered laconically, +``Too much children!'' She volunteered the information that there had +been two more who had died. When asked why they had died, the poor +mother shrugged her shoulders listlessly, and replied, ``Don't know.'' +In addition to bearing and rearing these children, her work would sap +the vitality of any ordinary person. ``She got home soon after four in +the morning, cooked breakfast for the family and ate hastily herself. +At 4.30 she was in bed, staying there until eight. But part of that +time was disturbed for the children were noisy and the apartment was a +tiny, dingy place in a basement. At eight she started the three +oldest boys to school, and cleaned up the debris of breakfast and of +supper the night before. At twelve she carried a hot lunch to her +husband and had dinner ready for the three school children. In the +afternoon, there were again dishes and cooking, and caring for three +babies aged five, three years, and six months. At five, supper was +ready for the family. The mother ate by herself and was off to work +at 5:45.'' + +Another of the night-working mothers was a frail looking Frenchwoman +of twenty-seven years, with a husband and five children ranging from +eight years to fourteen months. Three other children had died. When +visited, she was doing a huge washing. She was forced into night work +to meet the expenses of the family. She estimated that she succeeded +in getting five hours' sleep during the day. ``I take my baby to bed +with me, but he cries, and my little four-year-old boy cries, too, and +comes in to make me get up, so you can't call that a very good +sleep.'' + +The problem among unmarried women or those without family is not the +same, this investigator points out. ``They sleep longer by day than +they normally would by night.'' We are also informed that pregnant +women work at night in the mills, sometimes up to the very hour of +delivery. ``It's queer,'' exclaimed a woman supervisor of one of the +Rhode Island mills, ``but some women, both on the day and the night +shift, will stick to their work right up to the last minute, and will +use every means to deceive you about their condition. I go around and +talk to them, but make little impression. We have had several narrow +escapes....A Polish mother with five children had worked in a mill by +day or by night, ever since her marriage, stopping only to have her +babies. One little girl had died several years ago, and the youngest +child, says Mrs. Kelley, did not look promising. It had none of the +charm of babyhood; its body and clothing were filthy; and its lower +lip and chin covered with repulsive black sores. + +It should be remembered that the Consumers' League, which publishes +these reports on women in industry, is not advocating Birth Control +education, but is aiming ``to awaken responsibility for conditions +under which goods are produced, and through investigation, education +and legislation, to mobilize public opinion in behalf of enlightened +standards for workers and honest products for all.'' Nevertheless, in +Miss Agnes de Lima's report of conditions in Passaic, New Jersey, we +find the same tale of penalized, prostrate motherhood, bearing the +crushing burden of economic injustice and cruelty; the same blind but +overpowering instincts of love and hunger driving young women into the +factories to work, night in and night out, to support their procession +of uncared for and undernourished babies. It is the married women +with young children who work on the inferno-like shifts. They are +driven to it by the low wages of their husbands. They choose night +work in order to be with their children in the daytime. They are +afraid of the neglect and ill-treatment the children might receive at +the hands of paid caretakers. Thus they condemn themselves to eighteen +or twenty hours of daily toil. Surely no mother with three, four, +five or six children can secure much rest by day. + +``Take almost any house''--we read in the report of conditions in New +Jersey--``knock at almost any door and you will find a weary, tousled +woman, half-dressed, doing her housework, or trying to snatch an hour +or two of sleep after her long night of work in the mill. ...The facts +are there for any one to see; the hopeless and exhausted woman, her +cluttered three or four rooms, the swarm of sickly and neglected +children.'' + +These women claimed that night work was unavoidable, as their husbands +received so little pay. This in spite of all our vaunted ``high +wages.'' Only three women were found who went into the drudgery of +night work without being obliged to do so. Two had no children, and +their husbands' earnings were sufficient for their needs. One of +these was saving for a trip to Europe, and chose the night shift +because she found it less strenuous than the day. Only four of the +hundred women reported upon were unmarried, and ninety-two of the +married women had children. Of the four childless married women, one +had lost two children, and another was recovering from a recent +miscarriage. There were five widows. The average number of children +was three in a family. Thirty-nine of the mothers had four or more. +Three of them had six children, and six of them had seven children +apiece. These women ranged between the ages of twenty-five and forty, +and more than half the children were less than seven years of age. +Most of them had babies of one, two and three years of age. + +At the risk of repetition, we quote one of the typical cases reported +by Miss De Lima with features practically identical with the +individual cases reported from Rhode Island. It is of a mother who +comes home from work at 5:30 every morning, falls on the bed from +exhaustion, arises again at eight or nine o'clock to see that the +older children are sent off to school. A son of five, like the rest +of the children, is on a diet of coffee,--milk costs too much. After +the children have left for school, the overworked mother again tries +to sleep, though the small son bothers her a great deal. Besides, she +must clean the house, wash, iron, mend, sew and prepare the midday +meal. She tries to snatch a little sleep in the afternoon, but +explains: ``When you got big family, all time work. Night-time in +mill drag so long, so long; day-time in home go so quick.'' By five, +this mother must get the family's supper ready, and dress for the +night's work, which begins at seven. The investigator further +reports: ``The next day was a holiday, and for a diversion, Mrs. N. +thought she would go up to the cemetery: `I got some children up +there,' she explained, `and same time I get some air. No, I don't go +nowheres, just to the mill and then home.''' + +Here again, as in all reports on women in industry, we find the +prevalence of pregnant women working on night-shifts, often to the +very day of their delivery. ``Oh, yes, plenty women, big bellies, +work in the night time,'' one of the toiling mothers volunteered. +``Shame they go, but what can do?'' The abuse was general. Many +mothers confessed that owing to poverty they themselves worked up to +the last week or even day before the birth of their children. Births +were even reported in one of the mills during the night shift. A +foreman told of permitting a night-working woman to leave at 6.30 one +morning, and of the birth of her baby at 7.30. Several women told of +leaving the day-shift because of pregnancy and of securing places on +the nightshift where their condition was less conspicuous, and the +bosses more tolerant. One mother defended her right to stay at work, +says the report, claiming that as long as she could do her work, it +was nobody's business. In a doorway sat a sickly and bloodless woman +in an advanced stage of pregnancy. Her first baby had died of general +debility. She had worked at night in the mill until the very day of +its birth. This time the boss had told her she could stay if she +wished, but reminded her of what had happened last time. So she had +stopped work, as the baby was expected any day. + +Again and again we read the same story, which varied only in detail: +the mother in the three black rooms; the sagging porch overflowing +with pale and sickly children; the over-worked mother of seven, still +nursing her youngest, who is two or three months old. Worn and +haggard, with a skeleton-like child pulling at her breast, the women +tries to make the investigator understand. The grandmother helps to +interpret. ``She never sleeps,'' explains the old woman, ``how can +she with so many children?'' She works up to the last moment before +her baby comes, and returns to work as soon as they are four weeks +old. + +Another apartment in the same house; another of those night-working +mothers, who had just stopped because she is pregnant. The boss had +kindly given her permission to stay on, but she found the reaching on +the heavy spinning machines too hard. Three children, ranging in age +from five to twelve years, are all sickly and forlorn and must be +cared for. There is a tubercular husband, who is unable to work +steadily, and is able to bring in only $12 a week. Two of the babies +had died, one because the mother had returned to work too soon after +its birth and had lost her milk. She had fed him tea and bread, ``so +he died.'' + +The most heartrending feature of it all--in these homes of the mothers +who work at night--is the expression in the faces of the children; +children of chance, dressed in rags, undernourished, underclothed, all +predisposed to the ravages of chronic and epidemic disease. + +The reports on infant mortality published under the direction of the +Children's Bureau substantiate for the United States of America the +findings of the Galton Laboratory for Great Britain, showing that an +abnormally high rate of fertility is usually associated with poverty, +filth, disease, feeblemindedness and a high infant mortality rate. It +is a commonplace truism that a high birth-rate is accompanied by a +high infant-mortality rate. No longer is it necessary to dissociate +cause and effect, to try to determine whether the high birth rate is +the cause of the high infant mortality rate. It is sufficient to know +that they are organically correlated along with other anti-social +factors detrimental to individual, national and racial welfare. The +figures presented by Hibbs [2] likewise reveal a much higher infant +mortality rate for the later born children of large families. + +The statistics which show that the greatest number of children are +born to parents whose earnings are the lowest,[3] that the direst +poverty is associated with uncontrolled fecundity emphasize the +character of the parenthood we are depending upon to create the race +of the future. + +A distinguished American opponent of Birth Control some years ago +spoke of the ``racial'' value of this high infant mortality rate among +the ``unfit.'' He forgot, however, that the survival-rate of the +children born of these overworked and fatigued mothers may +nevertheless be large enough, aided and abetted by philanthropies and +charities, to form the greater part of the population of to-morrow. As +Dr. Karl Pearson has stated: ``Degenerate stocks under present social +conditions are not short-lived; they live to have more than the normal +size of family.'' + +Reports of charitable organizations; the famous ``one hundred neediest +cases'' presented every year by the New York Times to arouse the +sentimental generosity of its readers; statistics of public and +private hospitals, charities and corrections; analyses of pauperism in +town and country--all tell the same tale of uncontrolled and +irresponsible fecundity. The facts, the figures, the appalling truth +are there for all to read. It is only in the remedy proposed, the +effective solution, that investigators and students of the problem +disagree. + +Confronted with the ``startling and disgraceful'' conditions of +affairs indicated by the fact that a quarter of a million babies die +every year in the United States before they are one year old, and that +no less than 23,000 women die in childbirth, a large number of experts +and enthusiasts have placed their hopes in maternity-benefit measures. + +Such measures sharply illustrate the superficial and fragmentary +manner in which the whole problem of motherhood is studied to-day. It +seeks a LAISSER FAIRE policy of parenthood or marriage, with an +indiscriminating paternalism concerning maternity. It is as though +the Government were to say: ``Increase and multiply; we shall assume +the responsibility of keeping your babies alive.'' Even granting that +the administration of these measures might be made effective and +effectual, which is more than doubtful, we see that they are based +upon a complete ignorance or disregard of the most important fact in +the situation--that of indiscriminate and irresponsible fecundity. +They tacitly assume that all parenthood is desirable, that all +children should be born, and that infant mortality can be controlled +by external aid. In the great world-problem of creating the men and +women of to-morrow, it is not merely a question of sustaining the +lives of all children, irrespective of their hereditary and physical +qualities, to the point where they, in turn, may reproduce their kind. +Advocates of Birth Control offer and accept no such superficial +solution. This philosophy is based upon a clearer vision and a more +profound comprehension of human life. Of immediate relief for the +crushed and enslaved motherhood of the world through State aid, no +better criticism has been made than that of Havelock Ellis: + +``To the theoretical philanthropist, eager to reform the world on +paper, nothing seems simpler than to cure the present evils of child- +rearing by setting up State nurseries which are at once to relieve +mothers of everything connected with the men of the future beyond the +pleasure--if such it happens to be--of conceiving them, and the +trouble of bearing the, and at the same time to rear them up +independently of the home, in a wholesome, economical and scientific +manner. Nothing seems simpler, but from the fundamental psychological +point of view nothing is falser. ...A State which admits that the +individuals composing it are incompetent to perform their most sacred +and intimate functions, and takes it upon itself to perform them +itself instead, attempts a task that would be undesirable, even if it +were possible of achievement.[4]'' It may be replied that maternity +benefit measures aim merely to aid mothers more adequately to fulfil +their biological and social functions. But from the point of view of +Birth Control, that will never be possible until the crushing +exigencies of overcrowding are removed--overcrowding of pregnancies as +well as of homes. As long as the mother remains the passive victim of +blind instinct, instead of the conscious, responsible instrument of +the life-force, controlling and directing its expression, there can be +no solution to the intricate and complex problems that confront the +whole world to-day. This is, of course, impossible as long as women +are driven into the factories, on night as well as day shifts, as long +as children and girls and young women are driven into industries to +labor that is physically deteriorating as a preparation for the +supreme function of maternity. + +The philosophy of Birth Control insists that motherhood, no less than +any other human function, must undergo scientific study, must be +voluntarily directed and controlled with intelligence and foresight. +As long as we countenance what H. G. Wells has well termed ``the +monstrous absurdity of women discharging their supreme social +function, bearing and rearing children, in their spare time, as it +were, while they `earn their living' by contributing some half- +mechanical element to some trivial industrial product'' any attempt to +furnish ``maternal education'' is bound to fall on stony ground. +Children brought into the world as the chance consequences of the +blind play of uncontrolled instinct, become likewise the helpless +victims of their environment. It is because children are cheaply +conceived that the infant mortality rate is high. But the greatest +evil, perhaps the greatest crime, of our so-called civilization of to- +day, is not to be gauged by the infant-mortality rate. In truth, +unfortunate babies who depart during their first twelve months are +more fortunate in many respects than those who survive to undergo +punishment for their parents' cruel ignorance and complacent +fecundity. If motherhood is wasted under the present regime of +``glorious fertility,'' childhood is not merely wasted, but actually +destroyed. Let us look at this matter from the point of view of the +children who survive. + +[1] U.S. Department of Labor: Children's Bureau. Infant Mortality Series, + No. 3, pp. 81, 82, 83, 84. +[2] Henry H. Hibbs, Jr. Infant Mortality: Its Relation to Social and + Industrial Conditions, p. 39. Russell Sage Foundation, New York, 1916. +[3] Cf. U. S. Department of Labor. Children's Bureau: Infant Mortality + Series, No. 11. p. 36. +[4] Havelock Ellis, Sex in Relation to Society, p. 31. + + + +CHAPTER III: ``Children Troop Down From Heaven....'' + +Failure of emotional, sentimental and so-called idealistic efforts, +based on hysterical enthusiasm, to improve social conditions, is +nowhere better exemplified than in the undervaluation of child-life. +A few years ago, the scandal of children under fourteen working in +cotton mills was exposed. There was muckraking and agitation. A wave +of moral indignation swept over America. There arose a loud cry for +immediate action. Then, having more or less successfully settled this +particular matter, the American people heaved a sigh of relief, +settled back, and complacently congratulated itself that the problem +of child labor had been settled once and for all. + +Conditions are worse to-day than before. Not only is there child labor +in practically every State in the Union, but we are now forced to +realize the evils that result from child labor, of child laborers now +grown into manhood and womanhood. But we wish here to point out a +neglected aspect of this problem. Child labor shows us how cheaply we +value childhood. And moreover, it shows us that cheap childhood is +the inevitable result of chance parenthood. Child labor is +organically bound up with the problem of uncontrolled breeding and the +large family. + +The selective draft of 1917--which was designed to choose for military +service only those fulfiling definite requirements of physical and +mental fitness--showed some of the results of child labor. It +established the fact that the majority of American children never got +beyond the sixth grade, because they were forced to leave school at +that time. Our overadvertised compulsory education does not compel-- +and does not educate. The selective-draft, it is our duty to +emphasize this fact, revealed that 38 per cent. of the young men (more +than a million) were rejected because of physical ill-health and +defects. And 25 per cent. were illiterate. + +These young men were the children of yesterday. Authorities tell us +that 75 per cent. of the school-children are defective. This means +that no less than fifteen million schoolchildren, out of 22,000,000 in +the United States, are physically or mentally below par. + +This is the soil in which all sorts of serious evils strike root. It +is a truism that children are the chief asset of a nation. Yet while +the United States government allotted 92.8 per cent. of its +appropriations for 1920 toward war expenses, three per cent. to public +works, 3.2 per cent. to ``primary governmental functions,'' no more +than one per cent. is appropriated to education, research and +development. Of this one per cent., only a small proportion is devoted +to public health. The conservation of childhood is a minor +consideration. While three cents is spent for the more or less +doubtful protection of women and children, fifty cents is given to the +Bureau of Animal Industry, for the protection of domestic animals. In +1919, the State of Kansas appropriated $25,000 to protect the health +of pigs, and $4,000 to protect the health of children. In four years +our Federal Government appropriated--roughly speaking--$81,000,000 for +the improvement of rivers; $13,000,000 for forest conservation; +$8,000,000 for the experimental plant industry; $7,000,000 for the +experimental animal industry; $4,000,000 to combat the foot and mouth +disease; and less than half a million for the protection of child +life. + +Competent authorities tell us that no less than 75 per cent. of +American children leave school between the ages of fourteen and +sixteen to go to work. This number is increasing. According to the +recently published report on ``The Administration of the First Child +Labor Law,'' in five states in which it was necessary for the +Children's Bureau to handle directly the working certificates of +children, one-fifth of the 25,000 children who applied for +certificates left school when they were in the fourth grade; nearly a +tenth of them had never attended school at all or had not gone beyond +the first grade; and only one-twenty-fifth had gone as far as the +eighth grade. But their educational equipment was even more limited +than the grade they attended would indicate. Of the children applying +to go to work 1,803 had not advanced further than the first grade even +when they had gone to school at all; 3,379 could not even sign their +own names legibly, and nearly 2,000 of them could not write at all. +The report brings automatically into view the vicious circle of child- +labor, illiteracy, bodily and mental defect, poverty and delinquency. +And like all reports on child labor, the large family and reckless +breeding looms large in the background as one of the chief factors in +the problem. + +Despite all our boasting of the American public school, of the equal +opportunity afforded to every child in America, we have the shortest +school-term, and the shortest school-day of any of the civilized +countries. In the United States of America, there are 106 illiterates +to every thousand people. In England there are 58 per thousand, +Sweden and Norway have one per thousand. + +The United States is the most illiterate country in the world--that +is, of the so-called civilized countries. Of the 5,000,000 +illiterates in the United States, 58 per cent. are white and 28 per +cent. native whites. Illiteracy not only is the index of inequality +of opportunity. It speaks as well a lack of consideration for the +children. It means either that children have been forced out of +school to go to work, or that they are mentally and physically +defective.[1] + +One is tempted to ask why a society, which has failed so lamentably to +protect the already existing child life upon which its very +perpetuation depends, takes upon itself the reckless encouragement of +indiscriminate procreation. The United States Government has recently +inaugurated a policy of restricting immigration from foreign +countries. Until it is able to protect childhood from criminal +exploitation, until it has made possible a reasonable hope of life, +liberty and growth for American children, it should likewise recognize +the wisdom of voluntary restriction in the production of children. + +Reports on child labor published by the National Child Labor Committee +only incidentally reveal the correlation of this evil with that of +large families. Yet this is evident throughout. The investigators +are more bent upon regarding child labor as a cause of illiteracy. + +But it is no less a consequence of irresponsibility in breeding. A +sinister aspect of this is revealed by Theresa Wolfson's study of +child-labor in the beet-fields of Michigan.[2] As one weeder put it: +``Poor man make no money, make plenty children--plenty children good +for sugar-beet business.'' Further illuminating details are given by +Miss Wolfson: + +``Why did they come to the beet-fields? Most frequently families with +large numbers of children said that they felt that the city was no +place to raise children--things too expensive and children ran wild-- +in the country all the children could work.'' Living conditions are +abominable and unspeakably wretched. An old woodshed, a long-abandoned +barn, and occasionally a tottering, ramshackle farmer's house are the +common types. ``One family of eleven, the youngest child two years, +the oldest sixteen years, lived in an old country store which had but +one window; the wind and rain came through the holes in the walls, the +ceiling was very low and the smoke from the stove filled the room. +Here the family ate, slept, cooked and washed.'' + +``In Tuscola County a family of six was found living in a one-room +shack with no windows. Light and ventilation was secured through the +open doors. Little Charles, eight years of age, was left at home to +take care of Dan, Annie and Pete, whose ages were five years, four +years, and three months, respectively. In addition, he cooked the +noonday meal and brought it to his parents in the field. The filth and +choking odors of the shack made it almost unbearable, yet the baby was +sleeping in a heap of rags piled up in a corner.'' + +Social philosophers of a certain school advocate the return to the +land--it is only in the overcrowded city, they claim, that the evils +resulting from the large family are possible. There is, according to +this philosophy, no overcrowding, no over-population in the country, +where in the open air and sunlight every child has an opportunity for +health and growth. This idyllic conception of American country life +does not correspond with the picture presented by this investigator, +who points out: + + ``To promote the physical and mental development of the child, we +forbid his employment in factories, shops and stores. On the other +hand, we are prone to believe that the right kind of farm-work is +healthful and the best thing for children. But for a child to crawl +along the ground, weeding beets in the hot sun for fourteen hours a +day--the average workday--is far from being the best thing. The law of +compensation is bound to work in some way, and the immediate result of +this agricultural work is interference with school attendance.'' + +How closely related this form of child-slavery is to the over-large +family, is definitely illustrated: ``In the one hundred and thirty- +three families visited, there were six hundred children. A +conversation held with a ``Rooshian-German' woman is indicative of the +size of most of the families: + +``How many children have you?'' inquired the investigator. + +``Eight--Julius, und Rose, und Martha, dey is mine; Gottlieb und +Philip, und Frieda, dey is my husband's;--und Otto und Charlie--dey +are ours.'' + + Families with ten and twelve children were frequently found, while +those of six and eight children are the general rule. The advantage +of a large family in the beet fields is that it does the most work. +In the one hundred thirty-three families interviewed, there were one +hundred eighty-six children under the age of six years, ranging from +eight weeks up; thirty-six children between the ages of six and eight, +approximately twenty-five of whom had never been to school, and eleven +over sixteen years of age who had never been to school. One ten-year- +old boy had never been to school because he was a mental defective; +one child of nine was practically blinded by cataracts. This child +was found groping his way down the beet-rows pulling out weeds and +feeling for the beet-plants--in the glare of the sun he had lost all +sense of light and dark. Of the three hundred and forty children who +were not going or had never gone to school, only four had reached the +point of graduation, and only one had gone to high school. These +large families migrated to the beet-fields in early spring. Seventy- +two per cent. of them are retarded. When we realize that feeble- +mindedness is arrested development and retardation, we see that these +``beet children'' are artificially retarded in their growth, and that +the tendency is to reduce their intelligence to the level of the +congenital imbecile. + +Nor must it be concluded that these large ``beet'' families are always +the ``ignorant foreigner'' so despised by our respectable press. The +following case throws some light on this matter, reported in the same +pamphlet: ``An American family, considered a prize by the agent +because of the fact that there were nine children, turned out to be a +`flunk.' They could not work in the beet-fields, they ran up a bill +at the country-store, and one day the father and the eldest son, a boy +of nineteen, were seen running through the railroad station to catch +an out-going train. The grocer thought they were `jumping' their +bill. He telephoned ahead to the sheriff of the next town. They were +taken off the train by the sheriff and given the option of going back +to the farm or staying in jail. They preferred to stay in jail, and +remained there for two weeks. Meanwhile, the mother and her eight +children, ranging in ages form seventeen years to nine months, had to +manage the best way they could. At the end of two weeks, father and +son were set free....During all of this period the farmers of the +community sent in provisions to keep the wife and children from +starving.'' Does this case not sum up in a nutshell the typical +American intelligence confronted with the problem of the too-large +family--industrial slavery tempered with sentimentality! + +Let us turn to a young, possibly a more progressive state. Consider +the case of ``California, the Golden'' as it is named by Emma Duke, in +her study of child-labor in the Imperial Valley, ``as fertile as the +Valley of the Nile.''[3] Here, cotton is king, and rich ranchers, +absentee landlords and others exploit it. Less than ten years ago +ranchers would bring in hordes of laboring families, but refuse to +assume any responsibility in housing them, merely permitting them to +sleep on the grounds of the ranch. Conditions have been somewhat +improved, but, sometimes, we read, ``a one roomed straw house with an +area of fifteen by twenty feet will serve as a home for an entire +family, which not only cooks but sleeps in the same room.'' Here, as +in Michigan among the beets, children are ``thick as bees.'' All kinds +of children pick, Miss Duke reports, ``even those as young as three +years! Five-year-old children pick steadily all day.... Many white +American children are among them--pure American stock, who have +gradually moved from the Carolinas, Tennessee, and other southern +states to Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma, Arizona, and on into the Imperial +Valley.'' Some of these children, it seems, wanted to attend school, +but their fathers did not want to work; so the children were forced to +become bread-winners. One man whose children were working with him in +the fields said, ``Please, lady, don't send them to school; let them +pick a while longer. I ain't got my new auto paid for yet.'' The +native white American mother of children working in the fields proudly +remarked: ``No; they ain't never been to school, nor me nor their +poppy, nor their granddads and grandmoms. We've always been +pickers!''--and she spat her tobacco over the field in expert fashion. + + ``In the Valley one hears from townspeople,'' writes the +investigator, ``that pickers make ten dollars a day, working the whole +family. With that qualification, the statement is ambiguous. One +Mexican in the Imperial Valley was the father of thirty-three +children--`about thirteen or fourteen living,' he said. If they all +worked at cotton-picking, they would doubtless altogether make more +than ten dollars a day.'' + +One of the child laborers revealed the economic advantage--to the +parents--in numerous progeny: ``Us kids most always drag from forty to +fifty pounds of cotton before we take it to be weighed. Three of us +pick. I'm twelve years old and my bag is twelve feet long. I can +drag nearly a hundred pounds. My sister is ten years old, and her bag +is eight feet long. My little brother is seven and his bag is five +feet long.'' + +Evidence abounds in the publications of the National Child Labor +Committee of this type of fecund parenthood.[4] It is not merely a +question of the large family versus the small family. Even +comparatively small families among migratory workers of this sort have +been large families. The high infant mortality rate has carried off +the weaker children. Those who survive are merely those who have been +strong enough to survive the most unfavorable living conditions. No; +it is a situation not unique, nor even unusual in human history, of +greed and stupidity and cupidity encouraging the procreative instinct +toward the manufacture of slaves. We hear these days of the +selfishness and the degradation of healthy and well-educated women who +refuse motherhood; but we hear little of the more sinister selfishness +of men and women who bring babies into the world to become child- +slaves of the kind described in these reports of child labor. + +The history of child labor in the English factories in the nineteenth +century throws a suggestive light on this situation. These child- +workers were really called into being by the industrial situation. +The population grew, as Dean Inge has described it, like crops in a +newly irrigated desert. During the nineteenth century, the numbers +were nearly quadrupled. ``Let those who think that the population of a +country can be increased at will, consider whether it is likely that +any physical, moral, or psychological change came over the nation co- +incidentally with the inventions of the spinning jenny and the steam +engine. It is too obvious for dispute that it was the possession of +capital wanting employment, and of natural advantages for using it, +that called those multitudes of human beings into existence, to eat +the food which they paid for by their labor.''[5] + +But when child labor in the factories became such a scandal and such a +disgrace that child-labor was finally forbidden by laws that possessed +the advantage over our own that they were enforced, the proletariat +ceased to supply children. Almost by magic the birth rate among the +workers declined. Since children were no longer of economic value to +the factories, they were evidently a drug in the home. This movement, +it should not be forgotten however, was coincident with the agitation +and education in Birth Control stimulated by the Besant-Bradlaugh +trial. + +Large families among migratory agricultural laborers in our own +country are likewise brought into existence in response to an +industrial demand. The enforcement of the child labor laws and the +extension of their restrictions are therefore an urgent necessity, not +so much, as some of our child-labor authorities believe, to enable +these children to go to school, as to prevent the recruiting of our +next generation from the least intelligent and most unskilled classes +in the community. As long as we officially encourage and countenance +the production of large families, the evils of child labor will +confront us. On the other hand, the prohibition of child labor may +help, as in the case of English factories, in the decline of the birth +rate. + +UNCONTROLLED BREEDING AND CHILD LABOR GO HAND IN HAND. And to-day +when we are confronted with the evils of the latter, in the form of +widespread illiteracy and defect, we should seek causes more deeply +rooted than the enslavement of children. The cost to society is +incalculable, as the National Child Labor Committee points out. ``It +is not only through the lowered power, the stunting and the moral +degeneration of its individual members, but in actual expense, through +the necessary provision for the human junk, created by premature +employment, in poor-houses, hospitals, police and courts, jails and by +charitable organizations.'' + +To-day we are paying for the folly of the over-production--and its +consequences in permanent injury to plastic childhood--of yesterday. +To-morrow, we shall be forced to pay for our ruthless disregard of our +surplus children of to-day. the child-laborer of one or two decades +ago has become the shifting laborer of to-day, stunted, underfed, +illiterate, unskilled, unorganized and unorganizable. ``He is the +last person to be hired and the first to be fired.'' Boys and girls +under fourteen years of age are no longer permitted to work in +factories, mills, canneries and establishments whose products are to +be shipped out of the particular state, and children under sixteen can +no longer work in mines and quarries. But this affects only one +quarter of our army of child labor--work in local industries, stores, +and farms, homework in dark and unsanitary tenements is still +permitted. Children work in ``homes'' on artificial flowers, +finishing shoddy garments, sewing their very life's blood and that of +the race into tawdry clothes and gewgaws that are the most +unanswerable comments upon our vaunted ``civilization.'' And to-day, +we must not forget, the child-laborer of yesterday is becoming the +father or the mother of the child laborer of to-morrow. + +``Any nation that works its women is damned,'' once wrote Woods +Hutchinson. The nation that works its children, one is tempted to +add, is committing suicide. Loud-mouthed defenders of American +democracy pay no attention to the strange fact that, although ``the +average education among all American adults is only the sixth grade,'' +every one of these adults has an equal power at the polls. The +American nation, with all its worship of efficiency and thrift, +complacently forgets that ``every child defective in body, education +or character is a charge upon the community,'' as Herbert Hoover +declared in an address before the American Child Hygiene Association +(October, 1920): ``The nation as a whole,'' he added, ``has the +obligation of such measures toward its children...as will yield to +them an equal opportunity at their start in life. If we could grapple +with the whole child situation for one generation, our public health, +our economic efficiency, the moral character, sanity and stability of +our people would advance three generations in one.'' + +The great irrefutable fact that is ignored or neglected is that the +American nation officially places a low value upon the lives of its +children. The brutal truth is that CHILDREN ARE CHEAP. When over- +production in this field is curtailed by voluntary restriction, when +the birth rate among the working classes takes a sharp decline, the +value of children will rise. Then only will the infant mortality rate +decline, and child labor vanish. + +Investigations of child labor emphasize its evils by pointing out that +these children are kept out of school, and that they miss the +advantages of American public school education. They express the +current confidence in compulsory education and the magical benefits to +be derived from the public school. But we need to qualify our faith +in education, and particularly our faith in the American public +school. Educators are just beginning to wake up to the dangers +inherent in the attempt to teach the brightest child and the mentally +defective child at the same time. They are beginning to test the +possibilities of a ``vertical'' classification as well as a +``horizontal'' one. That is, each class must be divided into what are +termed Gifted, Bright, Average, Dull, Normal, and Defective. In the +past the helter-skelter crowding and over-crowding together of all +classes of children of approximately the same age, produced only a +dull leveling to mediocrity.[6] + +An investigation of forty schools in New York City, typical of +hundreds of others, reveals deplorable conditions of overcrowding and +lack of sanitation.[7] The worst conditions are to be found in +locations the most densely populated. Thus of Public School No. 51, +located almost in the center of the notorious ``Hell's Kitchen'' +section, we read: ``The play space which is provided is a mockery of +the worst kind. The basement play-room is dark, damp, poorly lighted, +poorly ventilated, foul smelling, unclean, and wholly unfit for +children for purposes of play. The drainpipes from the roof have +decayed to such a degree that in some instances as little as a quarter +of the pipe remains. On rainy days, water enters the class-rooms, +hall-ways, corridors, and is thrown against windows because the pipes +have rotted away. The narrow stairways and halls are similar to those +of jails and dungeons of a century ago. The classrooms are poorly +lighted, inadequately equipped, and in some cases so small that the +desks of pupils and teachers occupy almost all of the floor-space.'' + +Another school, located a short distance from Fifth Avenue, the +``wealthiest street in the world,'' is described as an ``old shell of +a structure, erected decades ago as a modern school building. Nearly +two thousand children are crowded into class-rooms having a total +seating capacity of scarcely one thousand. Narrow doorways, intricate +hallways and antiquated stairways, dark and precipitous, keep ever +alive the danger of disaster from fire or panic. Only the eternal +vigilance of exceptional supervision has served to lessen the fear of +such a catastrophe. Artificial light is necessary, even on the +brightest days, in many of the class-rooms. In most of the +classrooms, it is always necessary when the sky is slightly +overcast.'' There is no ventilating system. + +In the crowded East Side section conditions are reported to be no +better. The Public Education Association's report on Public School +No. 130 points out that the site at the corner of Hester and Baxter +Streets was purchased by the city years ago as a school site, but that +there has been so much ``tweedledeeing and tweedleduming'' that the +new building which is to replace the old, has not even yet been +planned! Meanwhile, year after year, thousands of children are +compelled to study daily in dark and dingy class-rooms. ``Artificial +light is continually necessary,'' declares the report. ``The +ventilation is extremely poor. The fire hazard is naturally great. +There are no rest-rooms whatever for the teachers.'' Other schools in +the neighborhood reveal conditions even worse. In two of them, for +example; ``In accordance with the requirements of the syllabus in +hygiene in the schools, the vision of the children is regularly +tested. In a recent test of this character, it was found in Public +School 108, the rate of defective vision in the various grades ranged +from 50 to 64 per cent.! In Public School 106, the rate ranged from +43 to 94 per cent.!'' + +The conditions, we are assured, are no exceptions to the rule of +public schools in New York, where the fatal effects of overcrowding in +education may be observed in their most sinister but significant +aspects. + +The forgotten fact in this case is that efforts for universal and +compulsory education cannot keep pace with the overproduction of +children. Even at the best, leaving out of consideration the public +school system as the inevitable prey and plundering-ground of the +cheap politician and job-hunter, present methods of wholesale and +syndicated ``education'' are not suited to compete with the unceasing, +unthinking, untiring procreative powers of our swarming, spawning +populations. + +Into such schools as described in the recent reports of the Public +Education Association, no intelligent parent would dare send his +child. They are not merely fire-traps and culture-grounds of +infection, but of moral and intellectual contamination as well. More +and more are public schools in America becoming institutions for +subjecting children to a narrow and reactionary orthodoxy, aiming to +crush out all signs of individuality, and to turn out boys and girls +compressed into a standardized pattern, with ready-made ideas on +politics, religion, morality, and economics. True education cannot +grow out of such compulsory herding of children in filthy fire-traps. + +Character, ability, and reasoning power are not to be developed in +this fashion. Indeed, it is to be doubted whether even a completely +successful educational system could offset the evils of indiscriminate +breeding and compensate for the misfortune of being a superfluous +child. In recognizing the great need of education, we have failed to +recognize the greater need of inborn health and character. ``If it +were necessary to choose between the task of getting children educated +and getting them well born and healthy,'' writes Havelock Ellis, ``it +would be better to abandon education. There have been many great +peoples who never dreamed of national systems of education; there have +been no great peoples without the art of producing healthy and +vigorous children. The matter becomes of peculiar importance in great +industrial states, like England, the United States and Germany, +because in such states, a tacit conspiracy tends to grow up to +subordinate national ends to individual ends, and practically to work +for the deterioration of the race.''[8] + +Much less can education solve the great problem of child labor. +Rather, under the conditions prevailing in modern society, child labor +and the failure of the public schools to educate are both indices of a +more deeply rooted evil. Both bespeak THE UNDERVALUATION OF THE +CHILD. This undervaluation, this cheapening of child life, is to +speak crudely but frankly the direct result of overproduction. +``Restriction of output'' is an immediate necessity if we wish to +regain control of the real values, so that unimpeded, unhindered, and +without danger of inner corruption, humanity may protect its own +health and powers. + +[1] I am indebted to the National Child Labor Committee for these statistics, + as well as for many of the facts that follow. +[2] ``People Who Go to Beets'' Pamphlet No. 299, National Child Labor Committee. +[3] California the Golden, by Emma Duke. Reprinted from The American Child, + Vol. II, No. 3. November 1920. +[4] Cf. Child Welfare in Oklahoma; Child Welfare in Alabama; Child Welfare + in North Carolina; Child Welfare in Kentucky; Child Welfare in Tennessee. + Also, Children in Agriculture, by Ruth McIntire, and other studies. +[5] W. R. Inge: Outspoken Essays: p. 92 +[6] Cf. Tredgold: Inheritance and Educability. Eugenics Review, Vol. Xiii, + No. I, pp. 839 et seq. +[7] Cf. New York Times, June 4, 1921. +[8] ``Studies in the Psychology of Sex,'' Vol. VI. p. 20. + + + +CHAPTER IV: The Fertility of the Feeble-Minded + + What vesture have you woven for my year? + O Man and Woman who have fashioned it + Together, is it fine and clean and strong, + Made in such reverence of holy joy, + Of such unsullied substance, that your hearts + Leap with glad awe to see it clothing me, + The glory of whose nakedness you know? + +``The Song of the Unborn'' +Amelia Josephine Burr + + +There is but one practical and feasible program in handling the great +problem of the feeble-minded. That is, as the best authorities are +agreed, to prevent the birth of those who would transmit imbecility to +their descendants. Feeble-mindedness as investigations and statistics +from every country indicate, is invariably associated with an +abnormally high rate of fertility. Modern conditions of civilization, +as we are continually being reminded, furnish the most favorable +breeding-ground for the mental defective, the moron, the imbecile. +``We protect the members of a weak strain,'' says Davenport, ``up to +the period of reproduction, and then let them free upon the community, +and encourage them to leave a large progeny of `feeble-minded': which +in turn, protected from mortality and carefully nurtured up to the +reproductive period, are again set free to reproduce, and so the +stupid work goes on of preserving and increasing our socially unfit +strains.'' + +The philosophy of Birth Control points out that as long as civilized +communities encourage unrestrained fecundity in the ``normal'' members +of the population--always of course under the cloak of decency and +morality--and penalize every attempt to introduce the principle of +discrimination and responsibility in parenthood, they will be faced +with the ever-increasing problem of feeble-mindedness, that fertile +parent of degeneracy, crime, and pauperism. Small as the percentage +of the imbecile and half-witted may seem in comparison with the normal +members of the community, it should always be remembered that feeble- +mindedness is not an unrelated expression of modern civilization. Its +roots strike deep into the social fabric. Modern studies indicate +that insanity, epilepsy, criminality, prostitution, pauperism, and +mental defect, are all organically bound up together and that the +least intelligent and the thoroughly degenerate classes in every +community are the most prolific. Feeble-mindedness in one generation +becomes pauperism or insanity in the next. There is every indication +that feeble-mindedness in its protean forms is on the increase, that +it has leaped the barriers, and that there is truly, as some of the +scientific eugenists have pointed out, a feeble-minded peril to future +generations--unless the feeble-minded are prevented from reproducing +their kind. To meet this emergency is the immediate and peremptory +duty of every State and of all communities. + +The curious situation has come about that while our statesmen are busy +upon their propaganda of ``repopulation,'' and are encouraging the +production of large families, they are ignoring the exigent problem of +the elimination of the feeble-minded. In this, however, the +politicians are at one with the traditions of a civilization which, +with its charities and philanthropies, has propped up the defective +and degenerate and relieved them of the burdens borne by the healthy +sections of the community, thus enabling them more easily and more +numerously to propagate their kind. ``With the very highest +motives,'' declares Dr. Walter E. Fernald, ``modern philanthropic +efforts often tend to foster and increase the growth of defect in the +community....The only feeble-minded persons who now receive any +official consideration are those who have already become dependent or +delinquent, many of whom have already become parents. We lock the +barn-door after the horse is stolen. We now have state commissions for +controlling the gipsy-moth and the boll weevil, the foot-and-mouth +disease, and for protecting the shell-fish and wild game, but we have +no commission which even attempts to modify or to control the vast +moral and economic forces represented by the feeble-minded persons at +large in the community.'' + +How the feeble-minded and their always numerous progeny run the gamut +of police, alms-houses, courts, penal institutions, ``charities and +corrections,'' tramp shelters, lying-in hospitals, and relief afforded +by privately endowed religious and social agencies, is shown in any +number of reports and studies of family histories. We find cases of +feeble-mindedness and mental defect in the reports on infant mortality +referred to in a previous chapter, as well as in other reports +published by the United States government. Here is a typical case +showing the astonishing ability to ``increase and multiply,'' +organically bound up with delinquency and defect of various types: + +``The parents of a feeble-minded girl, twenty years of age, who was +committed to the Kansas State Industrial Farm on a vagrancy charge, +lived in a thickly populated Negro district which was reported by the +police to be the headquarters for the criminal element of the +surrounding State....The mother married at fourteen, and her first +child was born at fifteen. In rapid succession she gave birth to +sixteen live-born children and had one miscarriage. The first child, a +girl, married but separated from her husband....The fourth, fifth and +sixth, all girls, died in infancy or early childhood. The seventh, a +girl, remarried after the death of her husband, from whom she had been +separated. The eighth, a boy who early in life began to exhibit +criminal tendencies, was in prison for highway robbery and burglary. +The ninth, a girl, normal mentally, was in quarantine at the Kansas +State Industrial Farm at the time this study was made; she had lived +with a man as his common-law wife, and had also been arrested several +times for soliciting. The tenth, a boy, was involved in several +delinquencies when young and was sent to the detention-house but did +not remain there long. The eleventh, a boy...at the age of seventeen +was sentenced to the penitentiary for twenty years on a charge of +first-degree robbery; after serving a portion of his time, he was +paroled, and later was shot and killed in a fight. The twelfth, a +boy, was at fifteen years of age implicated in a murder and sent to +the industrial school, but escaped from there on a bicycle which he +had stolen; at eighteen, he was shot and killed by a woman. The +thirteenth child, feeble-minded, is the girl of the study. The +fourteenth, a boy was considered by police to be the best member of +the family; his mother reported him to be much slower mentally than +his sister just mentioned; he had been arrested several times. Once, +he was held in the detention-home and once sent to the State +Industrial school; at other times, he was placed on probation. The +fifteenth, a girl sixteen years old, has for a long time had a bad +reputation. Subsequent to the commitment of her sister to the Kansas +State Industrial Farm, she was arrested on a charge of vagrancy, found +to by syphilitic, and quarantined in a state other than Kansas. At +the time of her arrest, she stated that prostitution was her +occupation. The last child was a boy of thirteen years whose history +was not secured....''[1] + +The notorious fecundity of feeble-minded women is emphasized in +studies and investigations of the problem, coming from all countries. +``The feeble-minded woman is twice as prolific as the normal one.'' +Sir James Crichton-Browne speaks of the great numbers of feeble-minded +girls, wholly unfit to become mothers, who return to the work-house +year after year to bear children, ``many of whom happily die, but some +of whom survive to recruit our idiot establishments and to repeat +their mothers' performances.'' Tredgold points out that the number of +children born to the feeble-minded is abnormally high. Feeble-minded +women ``constitute a permanent menace to the race and one which +becomes serious at a time when the decline of the birth-rate +is...unmistakable.'' Dr. Tredgold points out that ``the average +number of children born in a family is four, whereas in these +degenerate families, we find an average of 7.3 to each. Out of this +total only a little more than ONE-THIRD--456 out of a total of 1,269 +children--can be considered profitable members of the community, and +that, be it remembered, at the parents' valuation. + +Another significant point is the number of mentally defective children +who survive. ``Out of the total number of 526 mentally affected +persons in the 150 families, there are 245 in the present generation-- +an unusually large survival.''[2] + +Speaking for Bradford, England, Dr. Helen U. Campbell touches another +significant and interesting point usually neglected by the advocates +of mothers' pensions, milk-stations, and maternity-education programs. + +``We are also confronted with the problem of the actually mentally +deficient, of the more or less feeble-minded, and the deranged, +epileptic...or otherwise mentally abnormal mother,'' writes this +authority. ``The `bad mothering' of these cases is quite unimprovable +at an infant welfare center, and a very definite if not relatively +very large percentage of our infants are suffering severely as a +result of dependence upon such `mothering.'''[3] + +Thus we are brought face to face with another problem of infant +mortality. Are we to check the infant mortality rate among the +feeble-minded and aid the unfortunate offspring to grow up, a menace +to the civilized community even when not actually certifiable as +mentally defective or not obviously imbecile? + +Other figures and studies indicate the close relationship between +feeble-mindedness and the spread of venereal scourges. We are +informed that in Michigan, 75 per cent. of the prostitute class is +infected with some form of venereal disease, and that 75 per cent. of +the infected are mentally defective,--morons, imbeciles, or ``border- +line'' cases most dangerous to the community at large. At least 25 +per cent. of the inmates of our prisons, according to Dr. Fernald, are +mentally defective and belong either to the feeble-minded or to the +defective-delinquent class. Nearly 50 per cent. of the girls sent to +reformatories are mental defectives. To-day, society treats feeble- +minded or ``defective delinquent'' men or women as ``criminals,'' +sentences them to prison or reformatory for a ``term,'' and then +releases them at the expiration of their sentences. They are usually +at liberty just long enough to reproduce their kind, and then they +return again and again to prison. The truth of this statement is +evident from the extremely large proportion in institutions of +neglected and dependent children, who are the feeble-minded offspring +of such feeble-minded parents. + +Confronted with these shocking truths about the menace of feeble- +mindedness to the race, a menace acute because of the unceasing and +unrestrained fertility of such defectives, we are apt to become the +victims of a ``wild panic for instant action.'' There is no occasion +for hysterical, ill-considered action, specialists tell us. They +direct our attention to another phase of the problem, that of the so- +called ``good feeble-minded.'' We are informed that imbecility, in +itself, is not synonymous with badness. If it is fostered in a +``suitable environment,'' it may express itself in terms of good +citizenship and useful occupation. It may thus be transmuted into a +docile, tractable, and peaceable element of the community. The moron +and the feeble-minded, thus protected, so we are assured, may even +marry some brighter member of the community, and thus lessen the +chances of procreating another generation of imbeciles. We read +further that some of our doctors believe that ``in our social scale, +there is a place for the good feeble-minded.'' + +In such a reckless and thoughtless differentiation between the ``bad'' +and the ``good'' feeble-minded, we find new evidence of the +conventional middle-class bias that also finds expression among some +of the eugenists. We do not object to feeble-mindedness simply +because it leads to immorality and criminality; nor can we approve of +it when it expresses itself in docility, submissiveness and obedience. +We object because both are burdens and dangers to the intelligence of +the community. As a matter of fact, there is sufficient evidence to +lead us to believe that the so-called ``borderline cases'' are a +greater menace than the out-and-out ``defective delinquents'' who can +be supervised, controlled and prevented from procreating their kind. +The advent of the Binet-Simon and similar psychological tests +indicates that the mental defective who is glib and plausible, bright +looking and attractive, but with a mental vision of seven, eight or +nine years, may not merely lower the whole level of intelligence in a +school or in a society, but may be encouraged by church and state to +increase and multiply until he dominates and gives the prevailing +``color''--culturally speaking--to an entire community. + +The presence in the public schools of the mentally defective children +of men and women who should never have been parents is a problem that +is becoming more and more difficult, and is one of the chief reasons +for lower educational standards. As one of the greatest living +authorities on the subject, Dr. A. Tredgold, has pointed out,[4] this +has created a destructive conflict of purpose. ``In the case of +children with a low intellectual capacity, much of the education at +present provided is for all practical purposes a complete waste of +time, money and patience....On the other hand, for children of high +intellectual capacity, our present system does not go far enough. I +believe that much innate potentiality remains undeveloped, even +amongst the working classes, owing to the absence of opportunity for +higher education, to the disadvantage of the nation. In consequence +of these fundamental differences, the catchword `equality of +opportunity' is meaningless and mere claptrap in the absence of any +equality to respond to such opportunity. What is wanted is not +equality of opportunity, but education adapted to individual +potentiality; and if the time and money now spent in the fruitless +attempt to make silk-purses out of sows' ears, were devoted to the +higher education of children of good natural capacity, it would +contribute enormously to national efficiency.'' + +In a much more complex manner than has been recognized even by +students of this problem, the destiny and the progress of civilization +and of human expression has been hindered and held back by this burden +of the imbecile and the moron. While we may admire the patience and +the deep human sympathy with which the great specialists in feeble- +mindedness have expressed the hope of drying up the sources of this +evil or of rendering it harmless, we should not permit sympathy or +sentimentality to blind us to the fact that health and vitality and +human growth likewise need cultivation. ``A LAISSER FAIRE policy,'' +writes one investigator, ``simply allows the social sore to spread. +And a quasi LAISSER FAIRE policy wherein we allow the defective to +commit crime and then interfere and imprison him, wherein we grant the +defective the personal liberty to do as he pleases, until he pleases +to descend to a plane of living below the animal level, and try to +care for a few of his descendants who are so helpless that they can no +longer exercise that personal liberty to do as they please,''--such a +policy increases and multiplies the dangers of the over-fertile +feeble-minded.[5] + +The Mental Survey of the State of Oregon recently published by the +United States Health Service, sets an excellent example and should be +followed by every state in the Union and every civilized country as +well. It is greatly to the credit of the Western State that it is one +of the first officially to recognize the primary importance of this +problem and to realize that facts, no matter how fatal to self- +satisfaction, must be faced. This survey, authorized by the state +legislature, and carried out by the University of Oregon, in +collaboration with Dr. C. L. Carlisle of the Public Health service, +aided by a large number of volunteers, shows that only a small +percentage of mental defectives and morons are in the care of +institutions. The rest are widely scattered and their condition +unknown or neglected. They are docile and submissive. they do not +attract attention to themselves as do the criminal delinquents and the +insane. Nevertheless, it is estimated that they number no less than +75,000 men, women, and children, out of a total population of 783,000, +or about ten per cent. Oregon, it is thought, is no exception to +other states. Yet under our present conditions, these people are +actually encouraged to increase and multiply and replenish the earth. + +Concerning the importance of the Oregon survey, we may quote Surgeon +General H. C. Cumming: ``the prevention and correction of mental +defectives is one of the great public health problems of to-day. It +enters into many phases of our work and its influence continually +crops up unexpectedly. For instance, work of the Public Health +Service in connection with juvenile courts shows that a marked +proportion of juvenile delinquency is traceable to some degree of +mental deficiency in the offender. For years Public Health officials +have concerned themselves only with the disorders of physical health; +but now they are realizing the significance of mental health also. +The work in Oregon constitutes the first state-wide survey which even +begins to disclose the enormous drain on a state, caused by mental +defects. One of the objects of the work was to obtain for the people +of Oregon an idea of the problem that confronted them and the heavy +annual loss, both economic and industrial, that it entailed. Another +was to enable the legislators to devise a program that would stop much +of the loss, restore to health and bring to lives of industrial +usefulness, many of those now down and out, and above all, to save +hundreds of children from growing up to lives of misery.'' + +It will be interesting to see how many of our State Legislatures have +the intelligence and the courage to follow in the footsteps of Oregon +in this respect. Nothing could more effectually stimulate discussion, +and awaken intelligence as to the extravagance and cost to the +community of our present codes of traditional morality. But we should +make sure in all such surveys, that mental defect is not concealed +even in such dignified bodies as state legislatures and among those +leaders who are urging men and women to reckless and irresponsible +procreation. + +I have touched upon these various aspects of the complex problem of +the feeble-minded, and the menace of the moron to human society, not +merely for the purpose of reiterating that it is one of the greatest +and most difficult social problems of modern times, demanding an +immediate, stern and definite policy, but because it illustrates the +actual harvest of reliance upon traditional morality, upon the +biblical injunction to increase and multiply, a policy still taught by +politician, priest and militarist. Motherhood has been held +universally sacred; yet, as Bouchacourt pointed out, ``to-day, the +dregs of the human species, the blind, the deaf-mute, the degenerate, +the nervous, the vicious, the idiotic, the imbecile, the cretins and +the epileptics--are better protected than pregnant women.'' The +syphilitic, the irresponsible, the feeble-minded are encouraged to +breed unhindered, while all the powerful forces of tradition, of +custom, or prejudice, have bolstered up the desperate effort to block +the inevitable influence of true civilization in spreading the +principles of independence, self-reliance, discrimination and +foresight upon which the great practice of intelligent parenthood is +based. + + To-day we are confronted by the results of this official policy. +There is no escaping it; there is no explaining it away. Surely it is +an amazing and discouraging phenomenon that the very governments that +have seen fit to interfere in practically every phase of the normal +citizen's life, dare not attempt to restrain, either by force or +persuasion, the moron and the imbecile from producing his large family +of feeble-minded offspring. + +In my own experience, I recall vividly the case of a feeble-minded +girl who every year, for a long period, received the expert attention +of a great specialist in one of the best-known maternity hospitals of +New York City. The great obstetrician, for the benefit of interns and +medical students, performed each year a Caesarian operation upon this +unfortunate creature to bring into the world her defective, and, in +one case at least, her syphilitic, infant. ``Nelly'' was then sent to +a special room and placed under the care of a day nurse and a night +nurse, with extra and special nourishment provided. Each year she +returned to the hospital. Such cases are not exceptions; any +experienced doctor or nurse can recount similar stories. In the +interest of medical science this practice may be justified. I am not +criticising it from that point of view. I realize as well as the most +conservative moralist that humanity requires that healthy members of +the race should make certain sacrifices to preserve from death those +unfortunates who are born with hereditary taints. But there is a +point at which philanthropy may become positively dysgenic, when +charity is converted into injustice to the self-supporting citizen, +into positive injury to the future of the race. Such a point, it seems +obvious, is reached when the incurably defective are permitted to +procreate and thus increase their numbers. + +The problem of the dependent, delinquent and defective elements in +modern society, we must repeat, cannot be minimized because of their +alleged small numerical proportion to the rest of the population. The +proportion seems small only because we accustom ourselves to the habit +of looking upon feeble-mindedness as a separate and distinct calamity +to the race, as a chance phenomenon unrelated to the sexual and +biological customs not only condoned but even encouraged by our so- +called civilization. The actual dangers can only be fully realized +when we have acquired definite information concerning the financial +and cultural cost of these classes to the community, when we become +fully cognizant of the burden of the imbecile upon the whole human +race; when we see the funds that should be available for human +development, for scientific, artistic and philosophic research, being +diverted annually, by hundreds of millions of dollars, to the care and +segregation of men, women, and children who never should have been +born. The advocate of Birth Control realizes as well as all +intelligent thinkers the dangers of interfering with personal liberty. +Our whole philosophy is, in fact, based upon the fundamental +assumption that man is a self-conscious, self-governing creature, that +he should not be treated as a domestic animal; that he must be left +free, at least within certain wide limits, to follow his own wishes in +the matter of mating and in the procreation of children. Nor do we +believe that the community could or should send to the lethal chamber +the defective progeny resulting from irresponsible and unintelligent +breeding. + +But modern society, which has respected the personal liberty of the +individual only in regard to the unrestricted and irresponsible +bringing into the world of filth and poverty an overcrowding +procession of infants foredoomed to death or hereditable disease, is +now confronted with the problem of protecting itself and its future +generations against the inevitable consequences of this long-practised +policy of LAISSER-FAIRE. + +The emergency problem of segregation and sterilization must be faced +immediately. Every feeble-minded girl or woman of the hereditary type, +especially of the moron class, should be segregated during the +reproductive period. Otherwise, she is almost certain to bear +imbecile children, who in turn are just as certain to breed other +defectives. The male defectives are no less dangerous. Segregation +carried out for one or two generations would give us only partial +control of the problem. Moreover, when we realize that each feeble- +minded person is a potential source of an endless progeny of defect, +we prefer the policy of immediate sterilization, of making sure that +parenthood is absolutely prohibited to the feeble-minded. + +This, I say, is an emergency measure. But how are we to prevent the +repetition in the future of a new harvest of imbecility, the +recurrence of new generations of morons and defectives, as the logical +and inevitable consequence of the universal application of the +traditional and widely approved command to increase and multiply? + +At the present moment, we are offered three distinct and more or less +mutually exclusive policies by which civilization may hope to protect +itself and the generations of the future from the allied dangers of +imbecility, defect and delinquency. No one can understand the +necessity for Birth control education without a complete comprehension +of the dangers, the inadequacies, or the limitations of the present +attempts at control, or the proposed programs for social +reconstruction and racial regeneration. It is, therefore, necessary +to interpret and criticize the three programs offered to meet our +emergency. These may be briefly summarized as follows: + +(1) Philanthropy and Charity: This is the present and traditional +method of meeting the problems of human defect and dependence, of +poverty and delinquency. It is emotional, altruistic, at best +ameliorative, aiming to meet the individual situation as it arises and +presents itself. Its effect in practise is seldom, if ever, truly +preventive. Concerned with symptoms, with the allaying of acute and +catastrophic miseries, it cannot, if it would, strike at the radical +causes of social misery. At its worst, it is sentimental and +paternalistic. + +(2) Marxian Socialism: This may be considered typical of many widely +varying schemes of more or less revolutionary social reconstruction, +emphasizing the primary importance of environment, education, equal +opportunity, and health, in the elimination of the conditions (i. e. +capitalistic control of industry) which have resulted in biological +chaos and human waste. I shall attempt to show that the Marxian +doctrine is both too limited, too superficial and too fragmentary in +its basic analysis of human nature and in its program of revolutionary +reconstruction. + +(3) Eugenics: Eugenics seems to me to be valuable in its critical +and diagnostic aspects, in emphasizing the danger of irresponsible and +uncontrolled fertility of the ``unfit'' and the feeble-minded +establishing a progressive unbalance in human society and lowering the +birth-rate among the ``fit.'' But in its so-called ``constructive'' +aspect, in seeking to reestablish the dominance of healthy strain over +the unhealthy, by urging an increased birth-rate among the fit, the +Eugenists really offer nothing more farsighted than a ``cradle +competition'' between the fit and the unfit. They suggest in very +truth, that all intelligent and respectable parents should take as +their example in this grave matter of child-bearing the most +irresponsible elements in the community. + +[1] United States Public Health Service: Psychiatric Studies of Delinquents. + Reprint No. 598: pp. 64-65. +[2] The Problem of the Feeble-Minded: An Abstract of the Report of + the Royal Commission on the Cure and Control of the Feeble-Minded, + London: P. S. King & Son. +[3] Cf. Feeble-Minded in Ontario: Fourteenth Report for the year ending + October 31st, 1919. +[4] Eugenics Review, Vol. XIII, p. 339 et seq. +[5] Dwellers in the Vale of Siddem: A True Sto ry of the Social Aspect of + Feeble-mindedness. By A. C. Rogers and Maud A. Merrill; Boston (1919). + + + +CHAPTER V: The Cruelty of Charity + + ``Fostering the good-for-nothing at the expense of the + good is an extreme cruelty. It is a deliberate storing + up of miseries for future generations. There is no greater + curse to posterity than that of bequeathing them an increasing + population of imbeciles.'' + +Herbert Spencer + + +The last century has witnessed the rise and development of +philanthropy and organized charity. Coincident with the all- +conquering power of machinery and capitalistic control, with the +unprecedented growth of great cities and industrial centers, and the +creation of great proletarian populations, modern civilization has +been confronted, to a degree hitherto unknown in human history, with +the complex problem of sustaining human life in surroundings and under +conditions flagrantly dysgenic. + +The program, as I believe all competent authorities in contemporary +philanthropy and organized charity would agree, has been altered in +aim and purpose. It was first the outgrowth of humanitarian and +altruistic idealism, perhaps not devoid of a strain of sentimentalism, +of an idealism that was aroused by a desperate picture of human misery +intensified by the industrial revolution. It has developed in later +years into a program not so much aiming to succor the unfortunate +victims of circumstances, as to effect what we may term social +sanitation. Primarily, it is a program of self-protection. +Contemporary philanthropy, I believe, recognizes that extreme poverty +and overcrowded slums are veritable breeding-grounds of epidemics, +disease, delinquency and dependency. Its aim, therefore, is to +prevent the individual family from sinking to that abject condition in +which it will become a much heavier burden upon society. + +There is no need here to criticize the obvious limitations of +organized charities in meeting the desperate problem of destitution. +We are all familiar with these criticisms: the common indictment of +``inefficiency'' so often brought against public and privately endowed +agencies. The charges include the high cost of administration; the +pauperization of deserving poor, and the encouragement and fostering +of the ``undeserving''; the progressive destruction of self-respect +and self-reliance by the paternalistic interference of social +agencies; the impossibility of keeping pace with the ever-increasing +multiplication of factors and influences responsible for the +perpetuation of human misery; the misdirection and misappropriation of +endowments; the absence of interorganization and coordination of the +various agencies of church, state, and privately endowed institutions; +the ``crimes of charity'' that are occasionally exposed in newspaper +scandals. These and similar strictures we may ignore as irrelevant to +our present purpose, as inevitable but not incurable faults that have +been and are being eliminated in the slow but certain growth of a +beneficent power in modern civilization. In reply to such criticisms, +the protagonist of modern philanthropy might justly point to the +honest and sincere workers and disinterested scientists it has +mobilized, to the self-sacrificing and hard-working executives who +have awakened public attention to the evils of poverty and the menace +to the race engendered by misery and filth. + +Even if we accept organized charity at its own valuation, and grant +that it does the best it can, it is exposed to a more profound +criticism. It reveals a fundamental and irremediable defect. Its +very success, its very efficiency, its very necessity to the social +order, are themselves the most unanswerable indictment. Organized +charity itself is the symptom of a malignant social disease. + +Those vast, complex, interrelated organizations aiming to control and +to diminish the spread of misery and destitution and all the menacing +evils that spring out of this sinisterly fertile soil, are the surest +sign that our civilization has bred, is breeding and is perpetuating +constantly increasing numbers of defectives, delinquents and +dependents. My criticism, therefore, is not directed at the +``failure'' of philanthropy, but rather at its success. + +These dangers inherent in the very idea of humanitarianism and +altruism, dangers which have to-day produced their full harvest of +human waste, of inequality and inefficiency, were fully recognized in +the last century at the moment when such ideas were first put into +practice. Readers of Huxley's attack on the Salvation Army will +recall his penetrating and stimulating condemnation of the debauch of +sentimentalism which expressed itself in so uncontrolled a fashion in +the Victorian era. One of the most penetrating of American thinkers, +Henry James, Sr., sixty or seventy years ago wrote: ``I have been so +long accustomed to see the most arrant deviltry transact itself in the +name of benevolence, that the moment I hear a profession of good will +from almost any quarter, I instinctively look around for a constable +or place my hand within reach of a bell-rope. My ideal of human +intercourse would be a state of things in which no man will ever stand +in need of any other man's help, but will derive all his satisfaction +from the great social tides which own no individual names. I am sure +no man can be put in a position of dependence upon another, without +the other's very soon becoming--if he accepts the duties of the +relation--utterly degraded out of his just human proportions. No man +can play the Deity to his fellow man with impunity--I mean, spiritual +impunity, of course. For see: if I am at all satisfied with that +relation, if it contents me to be in a position of generosity towards +others, I must be remarkably indifferent at bottom to the gross social +inequality which permits that position, and, instead of resenting the +enforced humiliation of my fellow man to myself in the interests of +humanity, I acquiesce in it for the sake of the profit it yields to my +own self-complacency. I do hope the reign of benevolence is over; +until that event occurs, I am sure the reign of God will be +impossible.'' + +To-day, we may measure the evil effects of ``benevolence'' of this +type, not merely upon those who have indulged in it, but upon the +community at large. These effects have been reduced to statistics and +we cannot, if we would, escape their significance. Look, for instance +(since they are close at hand, and fairly representative of conditions +elsewhere) at the total annual expenditures of public and private +``charities and corrections'' for the State of New York. For the year +ending June 30, 1919, the expenditures of public institutions and +agencies amounted to $33, 936,205.88. The expenditures of privately +supported and endowed institutions for the same year, amount to +$58,100,530.98. This makes a total, for public and private charities +and corrections of $92,036,736.86. A conservative estimate of the +increase for the year (1920-1921) brings this figure approximately to +one-hundred and twenty-five millions. These figures take on an +eloquent significance if we compare them to the comparatively small +amounts spent upon education, conservation of health and other +constructive efforts. Thus, while the City of New York spent $7.35 +per capita on public education in the year 1918, it spent on public +charities no less than $2.66. Add to this last figure an even larger +amount dispensed by private agencies, and we may derive some definite +sense of the heavy burden of dependency, pauperism and delinquency +upon the normal and healthy sections of the community. + +Statistics now available also inform us that more than a million +dollars are spent annually to support the public and private +institutions in the state of New York for the segregation of the +feeble-minded and the epileptic. A million and a half is spent for +the up-keep of state prisons, those homes of the ``defective +delinquent.'' Insanity, which, we should remember, is to a great +extent hereditary, annually drains from the state treasury no less +than $11,985,695.55, and from private sources and endowments another +twenty millions. When we learn further that the total number of +inmates in public and private institutions in the State of New York-- +in alms-houses, reformatories, schools for the blind, deaf and mute, +in insane asylums, in homes for the feeble-minded and epileptic-- +amounts practically to less than sixty-five thousand, an insignificant +number compared to the total population, our eyes should be opened to +the terrific cost to the community of this dead weight of human waste. + +The United States Public Health Survey of the State of Oregon, +recently published, shows that even a young community, rich in natural +resources, and unusually progressive in legislative measures, is no +less subject to this burden. Out of a total population of 783,000 it +is estimated that more than 75,000 men, women and children are +dependents, feeble-minded, or delinquents. Thus about 10 per cent. of +the population is a constant drain on the finances, health, and future +of that community. These figures represent a more definite and +precise survey than the rough one indicated by the statistics of +charities and correction for the State of New York. The figures +yielded by this Oregon survey are also considerably lower than the +average shown by the draft examination, a fact which indicates that +they are not higher than might be obtained from other States. + +Organized charity is thus confronted with the problem of feeble- +mindedness and mental defect. But just as the State has so far +neglected the problem of mental defect until this takes the form of +criminal delinquency, so the tendency of our philanthropic and +charitable agencies has been to pay no attention to the problem until +it has expressed itself in terms of pauperism and delinquency. Such +``benevolence'' is not merely ineffectual; it is positively injurious +to the community and the future of the race. + + But there is a special type of philanthropy or benevolence, now +widely advertised and advocated, both as a federal program and as +worthy of private endowment, which strikes me as being more +insidiously injurious than any other. This concerns itself directly +with the function of maternity, and aims to supply GRATIS medical and +nursing facilities to slum mothers. Such women are to be visited by +nurses and to receive instruction in the ``hygiene of pregnancy''; to +be guided in making arrangements for confinements; to be invited to +come to the doctor's clinics for examination and supervision. They +are, we are informed, to ``receive adequate care during pregnancy, at +confinement, and for one month afterward.'' Thus are mothers and +babies to be saved. ``Childbearing is to be made safe.'' The work of +the maternity centers in the various American cities in which they +have already been established and in which they are supported by +private contributions and endowment, it is hardly necessary to point +out, is carried on among the poor and more docile sections of the +city, among mothers least able, through poverty and ignorance, to +afford the care and attention necessary for successful maternity. Now, +as the findings of Tredgold and Karl Pearson and the British Eugenists +so conclusively show, and as the infant mortality reports so +thoroughly substantiate, a high rate of fecundity is always associated +with the direst poverty, irresponsibility, mental defect, feeble- +mindedness, and other transmissible taints. The effect of maternity +endowments and maternity centers supported by private philanthropy +would have, perhaps already have had, exactly the most dysgenic +tendency. The new government program would facilitate the function of +maternity among the very classes in which the absolute necessity is to +discourage it. + +Such ``benevolence'' is not merely superficial and near-sighted. It +conceals a stupid cruelty, because it is not courageous enough to face +unpleasant facts. Aside from the question of the unfitness of many +women to become mothers, aside from the very definite deterioration in +the human stock that such programs would inevitably hasten, we may +question its value even to the normal though unfortunate mother. For +it is never the intention of such philanthropy to give the poor over- +burdened and often undernourished mother of the slum the opportunity +to make the choice herself, to decide whether she wishes time after to +time to bring children into the world. It merely says ``Increase and +multiply: We are prepared to help you do this.'' Whereas the great +majority of mothers realize the grave responsibility they face in +keeping alive and rearing the children they have already brought into +the world, the maternity center would teach them how to have more. +The poor woman is taught how to have her seventh child, when what she +wants to know is how to avoid bringing into the world her eighth. + +Such philanthropy, as Dean Inge has so unanswerably pointed out, is +kind only to be cruel, and unwittingly promotes precisely the results +most deprecated. It encourages the healthier and more normal sections +of the world to shoulder the burden of unthinking and indiscriminate +fecundity of others; which brings with it, as I think the reader must +agree, a dead weight of human waste. Instead of decreasing and aiming +to eliminate the stocks that are most detrimental to the future of the +race and the world, it tends to render them to a menacing degree +dominant. + +On the other hand, the program is an indication of a suddenly awakened +public recognition of the shocking conditions surrounding pregnancy, +maternity, and infant welfare prevailing at the very heart of our +boasted civilization. So terrible, so unbelievable, are these +conditions of child-bearing, degraded far below the level of primitive +and barbarian tribes, nay, even below the plane of brutes, that many +high-minded people, confronted with such revolting and disgraceful +facts, lost that calmness of vision and impartiality of judgment so +necessary in any serious consideration of this vital problem. Their +``hearts'' are touched; they become hysterical; they demand immediate +action; and enthusiastically and generously they support the first +superficial program that is advanced. Immediate action may sometimes +be worse than no action at all. The ``warm heart'' needs the balance +of the cool head. Much harm has been done in the world by those too- +good-hearted folk who have always demanded that ``something be done at +once.'' + +They do not stop to consider that the very first thing to be done is +to subject the whole situation to the deepest and most rigorous +thinking. As the late Walter Bagehot wrote in a significant but too +often forgotten passage: + +``The most melancholy of human reflections, perhaps, is that on the +whole it is a question whether the benevolence of mankind does more +good or harm. Great good, no doubt, philanthropy does, but then it +also does great evil. It augments so much vice, it multiplies so much +suffering, it brings to life such great populations to suffer and to +be vicious, that it is open to argument whether it be or be not an +evil to the world, and this is entirely because excellent people fancy +they can do much by rapid action, and that they will most benefit the +world when they most relieve their own feelings; that as soon as an +evil is seen, `something' ought to be done to stay and prevent it. +One may incline to hope that the balance of good over evil is in favor +of benevolence; one can hardly bear to think that it is not so; but +anyhow it is certain that there is a most heavy debt of evil, and that +this burden might almost all have been spared us if philanthropists as +well as others had not inherited form their barbarous forefathers a +wild passion for instant action.'' + +It is customary, I believe, to defend philanthropy and charity upon +the basis of the sanctity of human life. Yet recent events in the +world reveal a curious contradiction in this respect. Human life is +held sacred, as a general Christian principle, until war is declared, +when humanity indulges in a universal debauch of bloodshed and +barbarism, inventing poison gases and every type of diabolic +suggestion to facilitate killing and starvation. Blockades are +enforced to weaken and starve civilian populations--women and +children. This accomplished, the pendulum of mob passion swings back +to the opposite extreme, and the compensatory emotions express +themselves in hysterical fashion. Philanthropy and charity are then +unleashed. We begin to hold human life sacred again. We try to save +the lives of the people we formerly sought to weaken by devastation, +disease and starvation. We indulge in ``drives,'' in campaigns of +relief, in a general orgy of international charity. + +We are thus witnessing to-day the inauguration of a vast system of +international charity. As in our more limited communities and cities, +where self-sustaining and self-reliant sections of the population are +forced to shoulder the burden of the reckless and irresponsible, so in +the great world community the more prosperous and incidentally less +populous nations are asked to relieve and succor those countries which +are either the victims of the wide-spread havoc of war, of +militaristic statesmanship, or of the age-long tradition of reckless +propagation and its consequent over-population. + +The people of the United States have recently been called upon to +exercise their traditional generosity not merely to aid the European +Relief Council in its efforts to keep alive three million, five +hundred thousand starving children in Central Europe, but in addition +to contribute to that enormous fund to save the thirty million Chinese +who find themselves at the verge of starvation, owing to one of those +recurrent famines which strike often at that densely populated and +inert country, where procreative recklessness is encouraged as a +matter of duty. The results of this international charity have not +justified the effort nor repaid the generosity to which it appealed. +In the first place, no effort was made to prevent the recurrence of +the disaster; in the second place, philanthropy of this type attempts +to sweep back the tide of miseries created by unrestricted +propagation, with the feeble broom of sentiment. As one of the most +observant and impartial of authorities on the Far East, J. O. P. +Bland, has pointed out: ``So long as China maintains a birth-rate +that is estimated at fifty-five per thousand or more, the only +possible alternative to these visitations would be emigration and this +would have to be on such a scale as would speedily overrun and +overfill the habitable globe. Neither humanitarian schemes, +international charities nor philanthropies can prevent widespread +disaster to a people which habitually breeds up to and beyond the +maximum limits of its food supply.'' Upon this point, it is +interesting to add, Mr. Frank A. Vanderlip has likewise pointed out +the inefficacy and misdirection of this type of international +charity.[1] + +Mr. Bland further points out: ``The problem presented is one with +which neither humanitarian nor religious zeal can ever cope, so long +as we fail to recognize and attack the fundamental cause of these +calamities. As a matter of sober fact, the benevolent activities of +our missionary societies to reduce the deathrate by the prevention of +infanticide and the checking of disease, actually serve in the end to +aggravate the pressure of population upon its food-supply and to +increase the severity of the inevitably resultant catastrophe. What +is needed for the prevention, or, at least, the mitigation of these +scourges, is an organized educational propaganda, directed first +against polygamy and the marriage of minors and the unfit, and, next, +toward such a limitation of the birth-rate as shall approximate the +standard of civilized countries. But so long as Bishops and well +meaning philanthropists in England and America continue to praise and +encourage `the glorious fertility of the East' there can be but little +hope of minimizing the penalties of the ruthless struggle for +existence in China, and Nature's law will therefore continue to work +out its own pitiless solution, weeding out every year millions of +predestined weaklings.'' + +This rapid survey is enough, I hope, to indicate the manifold +inadequacies inherent in present policies of philanthropy and charity. +The most serious charge that can be brought against modern +``benevolence'' is that it encourages the perpetuation of defectives, +delinquents and dependents. These are the most dangerous elements in +the world community, the most devastating curse on human progress and +expression. Philanthropy is a gesture characteristic of modern +business lavishing upon the unfit the profits extorted from the +community at large. Looked at impartially, this compensatory +generosity is in its final effect probably more dangerous, more +dysgenic, more blighting than the initial practice of profiteering and +the social injustice which makes some too rich and others too poor. + +[1] Birth Control Review. Vol. V. No. 4. p. 7. + + + +CHAPTER VI: Neglected Factors of the World Problem + +War has thrust upon us a new internationalism. To-day the world is +united by starvation, disease and misery. We are enjoying the ironic +internationalism of hatred. The victors are forced to shoulder the +burden of the vanquished. International philanthropies and charities +are organized. The great flux of immigration and emigration has +recommenced. Prosperity is a myth; and the rich are called upon to +support huge philanthropies, in the futile attempt to sweep back the +tide of famine and misery. In the face of this new internationalism, +this tangled unity of the world, all proposed political and economic +programs reveal a woeful common bankruptcy. They are fragmentary and +superficial. None of them go to the root of this unprecedented world +problem. Politicians offer political solutions,--like the League of +Nations or the limitation of navies. Militarists offer new schemes of +competitive armament. Marxians offer the Third Internationale and +industrial revolution. Sentimentalists offer charity and +philanthropy. Coordination or correlation is lacking. And matters go +steadily from bad to worse. + +The first essential in the solution of any problem is the recognition +and statement of the factors involved. Now in this complex problem +which to-day confronts us, no attempt has been made to state the +primary facts. The statesman believes they are all political. +Militarists believe they are all military and naval. Economists, +including under the term the various schools for Socialists, believe +they are industrial and financial. Churchmen look upon them as +religious and ethical. What is lacking is the recognition of that +fundamental factor which reflects and coordinates these essential but +incomplete phases of the problem,--the factor of reproduction. For in +all problems affecting the welfare of a biological species, and +particularly in all problems of human welfare, two fundamental forces +work against each other. There is hunger as the driving force of all +our economic, industrial and commercial organizations; and there is +the reproductive impulse in continual conflict with our economic, +political settlements, race adjustments and the like. Official +moralists, statesmen, politicians, philanthropists and economists +display an astounding disregard of this second disorganizing factor. +They treat the world of men as if it were purely a hunger world +instead of a hunger-sex world. Yet there is no phase of human +society, no question of politics, economics, or industry that is not +tied up in almost equal measure with the expression of both of these +primordial impulses. You cannot sweep back overpowering dynamic +instincts by catchwords. You can neglect and thwart sex only at your +peril. You cannot solve the problem of hunger and ignore the problem +of sex. They are bound up together. + +While the gravest attention is paid to the problem of hunger and food, +that of sex is neglected. Politicians and scientists are ready and +willing to speak of such things as a ``high birth rate,'' infant +mortality, the dangers of immigration or over-population. But with +few exceptions they cannot bring themselves to speak of Birth Control. +Until they shall have broken through the traditional inhibitions +concerning the discussion of sexual matters, until they recognize the +force of the sexual instinct, and until they recognize Birth Control +as the PIVOTAL FACTOR in the problem confronting the world to-day, our +statesmen must continue to work in the dark. Political palliatives +will be mocked by actuality. Economic nostrums are blown willy-nilly +in the unending battle of human instincts. + +A brief survey of the past three or four centuries of Western +civilization suggests the urgent need of a new science to help +humanity in the struggle with the vast problem of to-day's disorder +and danger. That problem, as we envisage it, is fundamentally a +sexual problem. Ethical, political, and economic avenues of approach +are insufficient. We must create a new instrument, a new technique to +make any adequate solution possible. + +The history of the industrial revolution and the dominance of all- +conquering machinery in Western civilization show the inadequacy of +political and economic measures to meet the terrific rise in +population. The advent of the factory system, due especially to the +development of machinery at the beginning of the nineteenth century, +upset all the grandiloquent theories of the previous era. To meet the +new situation created by the industrial revolution arose the new +science of ``political economy,'' or economics. Old political methods +proved inadequate to keep pace with the problem presented by the rapid +rise of the new machine and industrial power. The machine era very +shortly and decisively exploded the simple belief that ``all men are +born free and equal.'' Political power was superseded by economic and +industrial power. To sustain their supremacy in the political field, +governments and politicians allied themselves to the new industrial +oligarchy. Old political theories and practices were totally +inadequate to control the new situation or to meet the complex +problems that grew out of it. + +Just as the eighteenth century saw the rise and proliferation of +political theories, the nineteenth witnessed the creation and +development of the science of economics, which aimed to perfect an +instrument for the study and analysis of an industrial society, and to +offer a technique for the solution of the multifold problems it +presented. But at the present moment, as the outcome of the machine +era and competitive populations, the world has been thrown into a new +situation, the solution of which is impossible solely by political or +economic weapons. + +The industrial revolution and the development of machinery in Europe +and America called into being a new type of working-class. Machines +were at first termed ``labor-saving devices.'' In reality, as we now +know, mechanical inventions and discoveries created unprecedented and +increasingly enormous demand for ``labor.'' The omnipresent and still +existing scandal of child labor is ample evidence of this. Machine +production in its opening phases, demanded large, concentrated and +exploitable populations. Large production and the huge development of +international trade through improved methods of transport, made +possible the maintenance upon a low level of existence of these +rapidly increasing proletarian populations. With the rise and spread +throughout Europe and America of machine production, it is now +possible to correlate the expansion of the ``proletariat.'' The +working-classes bred almost automatically to meet the demand for +machine-serving ``hands.'' + +The rise in population, the multiplication of proletarian populations +as a first result of mechanical industry, the appearance of great +centers of population, the so-called urban drift, and the evils of +overcrowding still remain insufficiently studied and stated. It is a +significant though neglected fact that when, after long agitation in +Great Britain, child labor was finally forbidden by law, the supply of +children dropped appreciably. No longer of economic value in the +factory, children were evidently a drug in the ``home.'' Yet it is +doubly significant that from this moment British labor began the long +unending task of self-organization.[1] + +Nineteenth century economics had no method of studying the +interrelation of the biological factors with the industrial. +Overcrowding, overwork, the progressive destruction of responsibility +by the machine discipline, as is now perfectly obvious, had the most +disastrous consequences upon human character and human habits.[2] +Paternalistic philanthropies and sentimental charities, which sprang +up like mushrooms, only tended to increase the evils of indiscriminate +breeding. From the physiological and psychological point of view, the +factory system has been nothing less than catastrophic. + +Dr. Austin Freeman has recently pointed out [3] some of the +physiological, psychological, and racial effects of machinery upon the +proletariat, the breeders of the world. Speaking for Great Britain, +Dr. Freeman suggests that the omnipresence of machinery tends toward +the production of large but inferior populations. Evidences of +biological and racial degeneracy are apparent to this observer. +``Compared with the African negro,'' he writes, ``the British sub-man +is in several respects markedly inferior. He tends to be dull; he is +usually quite helpless and unhandy; he has, as a rule, no skill or +knowledge of handicraft, or indeed knowledge of any kind....Over- +population is a phenomenon connected with the survival of the unfit, +and it is mechanism which has created conditions favorable to the +survival of the unfit and the elimination of the fit.'' The whole +indictment against machinery is summarized by Dr. Freeman: +``Mechanism by its reactions on man and his environment is +antagonistic to human welfare. It has destroyed industry and replaced +it by mere labor; it has degraded and vulgarized the works of man; it +has destroyed social unity and replaced it by social disintegration +and class antagonism to an extent which directly threatens +civilization; it has injuriously affected the structural type of +society by developing its organization at the expense of the +individual; it has endowed the inferior man with political power which +he employs to the common disadvantage by creating political +institutions of a socially destructive type; and finally by its +reactions on the activities of war it constitutes an agent for the +wholesale physical destruction of man and his works and the extinction +of human culture.'' + +It is not necessary to be in absolute agreement with this +diagnostician to realize the menace of machinery, which tends to +emphasize quantity and mere number at the expense of quality and +individuality. One thing is certain. If machinery is detrimental to +biological fitness, the machine must be destroyed, as it was in Samuel +Butler's ``Erewhon.'' But perhaps there is another way of mastering +this problem. + +Altruism, humanitarianism and philanthropy have aided and abetted +machinery in the destruction of responsibility and self-reliance among +the least desirable elements of the proletariat. In contrast with the +previous epoch of discovery of the New World, of exploration and +colonization, when a centrifugal influence was at work upon the +populations of Europe, the advent of machinery has brought with it a +counteracting centripetal effect. The result has been the +accumulation of large urban populations, the increase of +irresponsibility, and ever-widening margin of biological waste. + +Just as eighteenth century politics and political theories were unable +to keep pace with the economic and capitalistic aggressions of the +nineteenth century, so also we find, if we look closely enough, that +nineteenth century economics is inadequate to lead the world out of +the catastrophic situation into which it has been thrown by the +debacle of the World War. Economists are coming to recognize that the +purely economic interpretation of contemporary events is insufficient. +Too long, as one of them has stated, orthodox economists have +overlooked the important fact that ``human life is dynamic, that +change, movement, evolution, are its basic characteristics; that self- +expression, and therefore freedom of choice and movement, are +prerequisites to a satisfying human state''.[4] + +Economists themselves are breaking with the old ``dismal science'' of +the Manchester school, with its sterile study of ``supply and +demand,'' of prices and exchange, of wealth and labor. Like the +Chicago Vice Commission, nineteenth-century economists (many of whom +still survive into our own day) considered sex merely as something to +be legislated out of existence. They had the right idea that wealth +consisted solely of material things used to promote the welfare of +certain human beings. Their idea of capital was somewhat confused. +They apparently decided that capital was merely that part of capital +used to produce profit. Prices, exchanges, commercial statistics, and +financial operations comprised the subject matter of these older +economists. It would have been considered ``unscientific'' to take +into account the human factors involved. They might study the wear- +and-tear and depreciation of machinery: but the depreciation or +destruction of the human race did not concern them. Under ``wealth'' +they never included the vast, wasted treasury of human life and human +expression. + +Economists to-day are awake to the imperative duty of dealing with the +whole of human nature, with the relation of men, women, and children +to their environment--physical and psychic as well as social; of +dealing with all those factors which contribute to human sustenance, +happiness and welfare. The economist, at length, investigates human +motives. Economics outgrows the outworn metaphysical preconceptions +of nineteenth century theory. To-day we witness the creation of a new +``welfare'' or social economics, based on a fuller and more complete +knowledge of the human race, upon a recognition of sex as well as of +hunger; in brief, of physiological instincts and psychological +demands. The newer economists are beginning to recognize that their +science heretofore failed to take into account the most vital factors +in modern industry--it failed to foresee the inevitable consequences +of compulsory motherhood; the catastrophic effects of child labor upon +racial health; the overwhelming importance of national vitality and +well-being; the international ramifications of the population problem; +the relation of indiscriminate breeding to feeble-mindedness, and +industrial inefficiency. It speculated too little or not at all on +human motives. Human nature riots through the traditional economic +structure, as Carlton Parker pointed out, with ridicule and +destruction; the old-fashioned economist looked on helpless and +aghast. + +Inevitably we are driven to the conclusion that the exhaustively +economic interpretation of contemporary history is inadequate to meet +the present situation. In his suggestive book, ``The Acquisitive +Society,'' R. H. Tawney, arrives at the conclusion that ``obsession by +economic issues is as local and transitory as it is repulsive and +disturbing. To future generations it will appear as pitiable as the +obsession of the seventeenth century by religious quarrels appears to- +day; indeed, it is less rational, since the object with which it is +concerned is less important. And it is a poison which inflames every +wound and turns each trivial scratch into a malignant ulcer. Society +will not solve the particular problems of industry until that poison +is expelled, and it has learned to see industry in its proper +perspective. IF IT IS TO DO THAT IT MUST REARRANGE THE SCALE OF +VALUES. It must regard economic interests as one element in life, not +as the whole of life....''[5] + +In neglecting or minimizing the great factor of sex in human society, +the Marxian doctrine reveals itself as no stronger than orthodox +economics in guiding our way to a sound civilization. It works within +the same intellectual limitations. Much as we are indebted to the +Marxians for pointing out the injustice of modern industrialism, we +should never close our eyes to the obvious limitations of their own +``economic interpretation of history.'' While we must recognize the +great historical value of Marx, it is now evident that his vision of +the ``class struggle,'' of the bitter irreconcilable warfare between +the capitalist and working classes was based not upon historical +analysis, but upon on unconscious dramatization of a superficial +aspect of capitalistic regime. + +In emphasizing the conflict between the classes, Marx failed to +recognize the deeper unity of the proletariat and the capitalist. +Nineteenth century capitalism had in reality engendered and cultivated +the very type of working class best suited to its own purpose--an +inert, docile, irresponsible and submissive class, progressively +incapable of effective and aggressive organization. Like the +economists of the Manchester school, Marx failed to recognize the +interplay of human instincts in the world of industry. All the +virtues were embodied in the beloved proletariat; all the villainies +in the capitalists. The greatest asset of the capitalism of that age +was, as a matter of fact, the uncontrolled breeding among the laboring +classes. The intelligent and self-conscious section of the workers +was forced to bear the burden of the unemployed and the poverty- +stricken. + +Marx was fully aware of the consequences of this condition of things, +but shut his eyes tightly to the cause. He pointed out that +capitalistic power was dependent upon ``the reserve army of labor,'' +surplus labor, and a wide margin of unemployment. He practically +admitted that over-population was the inevitable soil of predatory +capitalism. But he disregarded the most obvious consequence of that +admission. It was all very dramatic and grandiloquent to tell the +workingmen of the world to unite, that they had ``nothing but their +chains to lose and the world to gain.'' Cohesion of any sort, united +and voluntary organization, as events have proved, is impossible in +populations bereft of intelligence, self-discipline and even the +material necessities of life, and cheated by their desires and +ignorance into unrestrained and uncontrolled fertility. + +In pointing out the limitations and fallacies of the orthodox Marxian +opinion, my purpose is not to depreciate the efforts of the Socialists +aiming to create a new society, but rather to emphasize what seems to +me the greatest and most neglected truth of our day:--Unless sexual +science is incorporated as an integral part of world-statesmanship and +the pivotal importance of Birth Control is recognized in any program +of reconstruction, all efforts to create a new world and a new +civilization are foredoomed to failure. + +We can hope for no advance until we attain a new conception of sex, +not as a merely propagative act, not merely as a biological necessity +for the perpetuation of the race, but as a psychic and spiritual +avenue of expression. It is the limited, inhibited conception of sex +that vitiates so much of the thought and ideation of the Eugenists. + +Like most of our social idealists, statesmen, politicians and +economists, some of the Eugenists suffer intellectually from a +restricted and inhibited understanding of the function of sex. This +limited understanding, this narrowness of vision, which gives rise to +most of the misconceptions and condemnations of the doctrine of Birth +Control, is responsible or the failure of politicians and legislators +to enact practical statutes or to remove traditional obscenities from +the law books. The most encouraging sign at present is the +recognition by modern psychology of the central importance of the +sexual instinct in human society, and the rapid spread of this new +concept among the more enlightened sections of the civilized +communities. The new conception of sex has been well stated by one to +whom the debt of contemporary civilization is well-nigh immeasurable. +``Sexual activity,'' Havelock Ellis has written, ``is not merely a +baldly propagative act, nor, when propagation is put aside, is it +merely the relief of distended vessels. It is something more even than +the foundation of great social institutions. It is the function by +which all the finer activities of the organism, physical and psychic, +may be developed and satisfied.''[6] + +No less than seventy years ago, a profound but neglected thinker, +George Drysdale, emphasized the necessity of a thorough understanding +of man's sexual nature in approaching economic, political and social +problems. ``Before we can undertake the calm and impartial +investigation of any social problem, we must first of all free +ourselves from all those sexual prejudices which are so vehement and +violent and which so completely distort our vision of the external +world. Society as a whole has yet to fight its way through an almost +impenetrable forest of sexual taboos.'' Drysdale's words have lost +none of their truth even to-day: ``There are few things from which +humanity has suffered more than the degraded and irreverent feelings +of mystery and shame that have been attached to the genital and +excretory organs. The former have been regarded, like their +corresponding mental passions, as something of a lower and baser +nature, tending to degrade and carnalize man by their physical +appetites. But we cannot take a debasing view of any part of our +humanity without becoming degraded in our whole being.''[7] + +Drysdale moreover clearly recognized the social crime of entrusting to +sexual barbarians the duty of legislating and enforcing laws +detrimental to the welfare of all future generations. ``They trust +blindly to authority for the rules they blindly lay down,'' he wrote, +``perfectly unaware of the awful and complicated nature of the subject +they are dealing with so confidently and of the horrible evils their +unconsidered statements are attended with. They themselves break +through the most fundamentally important laws daily in utter +unconsciousness of the misery they are causing to their fellows....'' + +Psychologists to-day courageously emphasize the integral relationship +of the expression of the sexual instinct with every phase of human +activity. Until we recognize this central fact, we cannot understand +the implications and the sinister significance of superficial attempts +to apply rosewater remedies to social evils,--by the enactment of +restrictive and superficial legislation, by wholesale philanthropies +and charities, by publicly burying our heads in the sands of +sentimentality. Self-appointed censors, grossly immoral +``moralists,'' makeshift legislators, all face a heavy responsibility +for the miseries, diseases, and social evils they perpetuate or +intensify by enforcing the primitive taboos of aboriginal customs, +traditions, and outworn laws, which at every step hinder the education +of the people in the scientific knowledge of their sexual nature. +Puritanic and academic taboo of sex in education and religion is as +disastrous to human welfare as prostitution or the venereal scourges. +``We are compelled squarely to face the distorting influences of +biologically aborted reformers as well as the wastefulness of +seducers,'' Dr. Edward A. Kempf recently declared. ``Man arose from +the ape and inherited his passions, which he can only refine but dare +not attempt to castrate unless he would destroy the fountains of +energy that maintain civilization and make life worth living and the +world worth beautifying....We do not have a problem that is to be +solved by making repressive laws and executing them. Nothing will be +more disastrous. Society must make life worth the living and the +refining for the individual by conditioning him to love and to seek +the love-object in a manner that reflects a constructive effect upon +his fellow-men and by giving him suitable opportunities. The virility +of the automatic apparatus is destroyed by excessive gormandizing or +hunger, by excessive wealth or poverty, by excessive work or idleness, +by sexual abuse or intolerant prudishness. The noblest and most +difficult art of all is the raising of human thoroughbreds.''[8] + +[1] It may be well to note, in this connection, that the decline in + the birth rate among the more intelligent classes of British labor + followed upon the famous Bradlaugh-Besant trial of 1878, the outcome + of the attempt of these two courageous Birth Control pioneers to + circulate among the workers the work of an American physician, Dr. + Knowlton's ``The Fruits of Philosophy,'' advocating Birth Control, + and the widespread publicity resulting fromt his trial. +[2] Cf. The Creative Impulse in Industry, by Helen Marot. The Instinct + of Workmanship, by Thorstein Veblen. +[3] Social Decay and Regeneration. By R. Austin Freeman. London 1921. +[4] Carlton H. Parker: The Casual Laborer and other essays: p. 30. +[5] R. H. Tawney. The Acquisitive Society, p. 184. +[6] Medical Review of Reviews: Vol. XXVI, p. 116. +[7] The Elements of Social Science: London, 1854. +[8] Proceedings of the International Conference of Women Physicians. + Vol. IV, pp. 66-67. New York, 1920. + + + +CHAPTER VII: Is Revolution the Remedy? + +Marxian Socialism, which seeks to solve the complex problem of human +misery by economic and proletarian revolution, has manifested a new +vitality. Every shade of Socialistic thought and philosophy +acknowledges its indebtedness to the vision of Karl Marx and his +conception of the class struggle. Yet the relation of Marxian +Socialism to the philosophy of Birth Control, especially in the minds +of most Socialists, remains hazy and confused. No thorough +understanding of Birth Control, its aims and purposes, is possible +until this confusion has been cleared away, and we come to a +realization that Birth Control is not merely independent of, but even +antagonistic to the Marxian dogma. In recent years many Socialists +have embraced the doctrine of Birth Control, and have generously +promised us that ``under Socialism'' voluntary motherhood will be +adopted and popularized as part of a general educational system. We +might more logically reply that no Socialism will ever be possible +until the problem of responsible parenthood has been solved. + +Many Socialists to-day remain ignorant of the inherent conflict +between the idea of Birth Control and the philosophy of Marx. The +earlier Marxians, including Karl Marx himself, expressed the bitterest +antagonism to Malthusian and neo-Malthusian theories. A remarkable +feature of early Marxian propaganda has been the almost complete +unanimity with which the implications of the Malthusian doctrine have +been derided, denounced and repudiated. Any defense of the so-called +``law of population'' was enough to stamp one, in the eyes of the +orthodox Marxians, as a ``tool of the capitalistic class,'' seeking to +dampen the ardor of those who expressed the belief that men might +create a better world for themselves. Malthus, they claimed, was +actuated by selfish class motives. He was not merely a hidebound +aristocrat, but a pessimist who was trying to kill all hope of human +progress. By Marx, Engels, Bebel, Karl Kautsky, and all the +celebrated leaders and interpreters of Marx's great ``Bible of the +working class,'' down to the martyred Rosa Luxemburg and Karl +Liebknecht, Birth Control has been looked upon as a subtle, +Machiavellian sophistry created for the purpose of placing the blame +for human misery elsewhere than at the door of the capitalist class. +Upon this point the orthodox Marxian mind has been universally and +sternly uncompromising. + +Marxian vituperation of Malthus and his followers is illuminating. It +reveals not the weakness of the thinker attacked, but of the +aggressor. This is nowhere more evident than in Marx's ``Capital'' +itself. In that monumental effort, it is impossible to discover any +adequate refutation or even calm discussion of the dangers of +irresponsible parenthood and reckless breeding, any suspicion that +this recklessness and irresponsibility is even remotely related to the +miseries of the proletariat. Poor Malthus is there relegated to the +humble level of a footnote. ``If the reader reminds me of Malthus, +whose essay on Population appeared in 1798,'' Marx remarks somewhat +tartly, ``I remind him that this work in its first form is nothing +more than a schoolboyish, superficial plagiary of De Foe, Sir James +Steuart, Townsend, Franklin, Wallace, etc., and does not contain a +single sentence thought out by himself. The great sensation this +pamphlet caused was due solely to party interest. The French +Revolution had passionate defenders in the United Kingdom.... `The +Principles of Population' was quoted with jubilance by the English +oligarchy as the great destroyer of all hankerings after human +development.''[1] + +The only attempt that Marx makes here toward answering the theory of +Malthus is to declare that most of the population theory teachers were +merely Protestant parsons.--``Parson Wallace, Parson Townsend, Parson +Malthus and his pupil the Arch-Parson Thomas Chalmers, to say nothing +of the lesser reverend scribblers in this line.'' The great pioneer +of ``scientific'' Socialism the proceeds to berate parsons as +philosophers and economists, using this method of escape from the very +pertinent question of surplus population and surplus proletariat in +its relation to labor organization and unemployment. It is true that +elsewhere [2] he goes so far as to admit that ``even Malthus recognized +over-population as a necessity of modern industry, though, after his +narrow fashion, he explains it by the absolute over-growth of the +laboring population, not by their becoming relatively supernumerary.'' +A few pages later, however, Marx comes back again to the question of +over-population, failing to realize that it is to the capitalists' +advantage that the working classes are unceasingly prolific. ``The +folly is now patent,'' writes the unsuspecting Marx, ``of the economic +wisdom that preaches to the laborers the accommodation of their +numbers to the requirements of capital. The mechanism of capitalist +production and accumulation constantly affects this adjustment. The +first work of this adaptation is the creation of a relatively surplus +population or industrial reserve army. Its last work is the misery of +constantly extending strata of the army of labor, and the dead weight +of pauperism.'' A little later he ventures again in the direction of +Malthusianism so far as to admit that ``the accumulation of wealth at +one pole is...at the same time the accumulation of misery, agony of +toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality and mental degradation at the +opposite pole.'' Nevertheless, there is no indication that Marx +permitted himself to see that the proletariat accommodates its numbers +to the ``requirements of capital'' precisely by breeding a large, +docile, submissive and easily exploitable population. + +Had the purpose of Marx been impartial and scientific, this trifling +difference might easily have been overcome and the dangers of reckless +breeding insisted upon. But beneath all this wordy pretension and +economic jargon, we detect another aim. That is the unconscious +dramatization of human society into the ``class conflict.'' Nothing +was overlooked that might sharpen and accentuate this ``conflict.'' +Marx depicted a great melodramatic conflict, in which all the virtues +were embodied in the proletariat and all the villainies in the +capitalist. In the end, as always in such dramas, virtue was to be +rewarded and villainy punished. The working class was the temporary +victim of a subtle but thorough conspiracy of tyranny and repression. +Capitalists, intellectuals and the BOURGEOISIE were all ``in on'' this +diabolic conspiracy, all thoroughly familiar with the plot, which Marx +was so sure he had uncovered. In the last act was to occur that +catastrophic revolution, with the final transformation scene of the +Socialist millenium. Presented in ``scientific'' phraseology, with all +the authority of economic terms, ``Capital'' appeared at the +psychological moment. The heaven of the traditional theology had been +shattered by Darwinian science, and here, dressed up in all the +authority of the new science, appeared a new theology, the promise of +a new heaven, an earthly paradise, with an impressive scale of rewards +for the faithful and ignominious punishments for the capitalists. + +Critics have often been puzzled by the tremendous vitality of this +work. Its prediction s have never, despite the claims of the +faithful, been fulfilled. Instead of diminishing, the spirit of +nationalism has been intensified tenfold. In nearly every respect +Marx's predictions concerning the evolution of historical and economic +forces have been contradicted by events, culminating in the great war. +Most of his followers, the ``revolutionary'' Socialists, were swept +into the whirlpool of nationalistic militarism. Nevertheless, this +``Bible of the working classes'' still enjoys a tremendous authority +as a scientific work. By some it is regarded as an economic treatise; +by others as a philosophy of history; by others as a collection of +sociological laws; and finally by others as a moral and political book +of reference. Criticized, refuted, repudiated and demolished by +specialists, it nevertheless exerts its influences and retains its +mysterious vitality. + +We must seek the explanation of this secret elsewhere. Modern +psychology has taught us that human nature has a tendency to place the +cause of its own deficiencies and weaknesses outside of itself, to +attribute to some external agency, to some enemy or group of enemies, +the blame for its own misery. In his great work Marx unconsciously +strengthens and encourages this tendency. The immediate effect of his +teaching, vulgarized and popularized in a hundred different forms, is +to relieve the proletariat of all responsibility for the effects of +its reckless breeding, and even to encourage it in the perpetuation of +misery. + +The inherent truth in the Marxian teachings was, moreover, immediately +subordinated to their emotional and religious appeal. A book that +could so influence European thought could not be without merit. But +in the process of becoming the ``Bible of the working classes,'' +``Capital'' suffered the fate of all such ``Bibles.'' The spirit of +ecclesiastical dogmatism was transfused into the religion of +revolutionary Socialism. This dogmatic religious quality has been +noted by many of the most observant critics of Socialism. Marx was +too readily accepted as the father of the church, and ``Capital'' as +the sacred gospel of the social revolution. All questions of tactics, +of propaganda, of class warfare, of political policy, were to be +solved by apt quotations from the ``good book.'' New thoughts, new +schemes, new programs, based upon tested fact and experience, the +outgrowth of newer discoveries concerning the nature of men, upon the +recognition of the mistakes of the master, could only be approved or +admitted according as they could or could not be tested by some bit of +text quoted from Marx. His followers assumed that Karl Marx had +completed the philosophy of Socialism, and that the duty of the +proletariat thenceforth was not to think for itself, but merely to +mobilize itself under competent Marxian leaders for the realization of +his ideas. + +From the day of this apotheosis of Marx until our own, the +``orthodox'' Socialist of any shade is of the belief that the first +essential for social salvation lies in unquestioning belief in the +dogmas of Marx. + +The curious and persistent antagonism to Birth Control that began with +Marx and continues to our own day can be explained only as the utter +refusal or inability to consider humanity in its physiological and +psychological aspects--these aspects, apparently, having no place in +the ``economic interpretation of history.'' It has remained for +George Bernard Shaw, a Socialist with a keener spiritual insight than +the ordinary Marxist, to point out the disastrous consequences of +rapid multiplication which are obvious to the small cultivator, the +peasant proprietor, the lowest farmhand himself, but which seem to +arouse the orthodox, intellectual Marxian to inordinate fury. ``But +indeed the more you degrade the workers,'' Shaw once wrote,[3] +``robbing them of all artistic enjoyment, and all chance of respect +and admiration from their fellows, the more you throw them back, +reckless, upon the one pleasure and the one human tie left to them-- +the gratification of their instinct for producing fresh supplies of +men. You will applaud this instinct as divine until at last the +excessive supply becomes a nuisance: there comes a plague of men; and +you suddenly discover that the instinct is diabolic, and set up a cry +of `over-population.' But your slaves are beyond caring for your +cries: they breed like rabbits: and their poverty breeds filth, +ugliness, dishonesty, disease, obscenity, drunkenness.'' + +Lack of insight into fundamental truths of human nature is evident +throughout the writings of the Marxians. The Marxian Socialists, +according to Kautsky, defended women in industry: it was right for +woman to work in factories in order to preserve her equality with man! +Man must not support woman, declared the great French Socialist +Guesde, because that would make her the PROLETAIRE of man! Bebel, the +great authority on woman, famous for his erudition, having critically +studied the problem of population, suggested as a remedy for too +excessive fecundity the consumption of a certain lard soup reputed to +have an ``anti-generative'' effect upon the agricultural population of +Upper Bavaria! Such are the results of the literal and uncritical +acceptance of Marx's static and mechanical conception of human +society, a society perfectly automatic; in which competition is always +operating at maximum efficiency; one vast and unending conspiracy +against the blameless proletariat. + +This lack of insight of the orthodox Marxians, long represented by the +German Social-Democrats, is nowhere better illustrated than in Dr. +Robinson's account of a mass meeting of the Social-Democrat party to +organize public opinion against the doctrine of Birth Control among +the poor.[4] ``Another meeting had taken place the week before, at +which several eminent Socialist women, among them Rosa Luxemburg and +Clara Zetkin, spoke very strongly against limitation of offspring +among the poor--in fact the title of the discussion was GEGEN DEN +GEBURTSTREIK! `Against the birth strike!' The interest of the +audience was intense. One could see that with them it was not merely +a dialectic question, as it was with their leaders, but a matter of +life and death. I came to attend a meeting AGAINST the limitation of +offspring; it soon proved to be a meeting very decidedly FOR the +limitation of offspring, for every speaker who spoke in favor of the +artificial prevention of conception or undesired pregnancies, was +greeted with vociferous, long-lasting applause; while those who tried +to persuade the people that a limited number of children is not a +proletarian weapon, and would not improve their lot, were so hissed +that they had difficulty going on. The speakers who were against +the...idea soon felt that their audience was against them....Why was +there such small attendance at the regular Socialistic meetings, while +the meetings of this character were packed to suffocation? It did not +apparently penetrate the leaders' heads that the reason was a simple +one. Those meetings were evidently of no interest to them, while +those which dealt with the limitation of offspring were of personal, +vital, present interest....What particularly amused me--and pained me- +-in the anti-limitationists was the ease and equanimity with which +they advised the poor women to keep on bearing children. The woman +herself was not taken into consideration, as if she was not a human +being, but a machine. What are her sufferings, her labor pains, her +inability to read, to attend meetings, to have a taste of life? What +does she amount to? The proletariat needs fighters. Go on, females, +and breed like animals. Maybe of the thousands you bear a few will +become party members....'' + +The militant organization of the Marxian Socialists suggests that +their campaign must assume the tactics of militarism of the familiar +type. As represented by militaristic governments, militarism like +Socialism has always encouraged the proletariat to increase and +multiply. Imperial Germany was the outstanding and awful example of +this attitude. Before the war the fall in the birth-rate was viewed by +the Junker party with the gravest misgivings. Bernhardi and the +protagonists of DEUTSCHLAND-UBER-ALLES condemned it in the strongest +terms. The Marxians unconsciously repeat the words of the government +representative, Krohne, who, in a debate on the subject in the +Prussian Diet, February 1916, asserted: ``Unfortunately this view has +gained followers amongst the German women....These women, in refusing +to rear strong and able children to continue the race, drag into the +dust that which is the highest end of women--motherhood. It is to be +hoped that the willingness to bear sacrifices will lead to a change +for the better....We need an increase in human beings to guard against +the attacks of envious neighbors as well as to fulfil our cultural +mission. Our whole economic development depends on increase of our +people.'' Today we are fully aware of how imperial Germany fulfiled +that cultural mission of hers; nor can we overlook the fact that the +countries with a smaller birth-rate survived the ordeal. Even from +the traditional militaristic standpoint, strength does not reside in +numbers, though the Caesars, the Napoleons and the Kaisers of the world +have always believed that large exploitable populations were necessary +for their own individual power. If Marxian dictatorship means the +dictatorship of a small minority wielding power in the interest of the +proletariat, a high-birth rate may be necessary, though we may here +recall the answer of the lamented Dr. Alfred Fried to the German +imperialists: ``It is madness, the apotheosis of unreason, to wish to +breed and care for human beings in order that in the flower of their +youth they may be sent in millions to be slaughtered wholesale by +machinery. We need no wholesale production of men, have no need of +the `fruitful fertility of women,' no need of wholesale wares, +fattened and dressed for slaughter What we do need is careful +maintenance of those already born. If the bearing of children is a +moral and religious duty, then it is a much higher duty to secure the +sacredness and security of human life, so that children born and bred +with trouble and sacrifice may not be offered up in the bloom of youth +to a political dogma at the bidding of secret diplomacy.'' + +Marxism has developed a patriotism of its own, if indeed it has not +yet been completely crystallized into a religion. Like the +``capitalistic'' governments it so vehemently attacks, it demands +self-sacrifice and even martyrdom from the faithful comrades. But +since its strength depends to so great a degree upon ``conversion,'' +upon docile acceptance of the doctrines of the ``Master'' as +interpreted by the popes and bishops of this new church, it fails to +arouse the irreligious proletariat. The Marxian Socialist boasts of +his understanding of ``working class psychology'' and criticizes the +lack of this understanding on the part of all dissenters. But, as the +Socialists' meetings against the ``birth strike'' indicate, the +working class is not interested in such generalities as the Marxian +``theory of value,'' the ``iron law'' of wages, ``the value of +commodities'' and the rest of the hazy articles of faith. Marx +inherited the rigid nationalistic psychology of the eighteenth +century, and his followers, for the most part, have accepted his +mechanical and superficial treatment of instinct.[5] Discontented +workers may rally to Marxism because it places the blame for their +misery outside of themselves and depicts their conditions as the +result of a capitalistic conspiracy, thereby satisfying that innate +tendency of every human being to shift the blame to some living person +outside himself, and because it strengthens his belief that his +sufferings and difficulties may be overcome by the immediate +amelioration of his economic environment. In this manner, +psychologists tell us, neuroses and inner compulsions are fostered. +No true solution is possible, to continue this analogy, until the +worker is awakened to the realization that the roots of his malady lie +deep in his own nature, his own organism, his own habits. To blame +everything upon the capitalist and the environment produced by +capitalism is to focus attention upon merely one of the elements of +the problem. The Marxian too often forgets that before there was a +capitalist there was exercised the unlimited reproductive activity of +mankind, which produced the first overcrowding, the first want. This +goaded humanity into its industrial frenzy, into warfare and theft and +slavery. Capitalism has not created the lamentable state of affairs +in which the world now finds itself. It has grown out of them, armed +with the inevitable power to take advantage of our swarming, spawning +millions. As that valiant thinker Monsieur G. Hardy has pointed out [6] +the proletariat may be looked upon, not as the antagonist of +capitalism, but as its accomplice. Labor surplus, or the ``army of +reserve'' which as for decades and centuries furnished the industrial +background of human misery, which so invariably defeats strikes and +labor revolts, cannot honestly be blamed upon capitalism. It is, as +M. Hardy points out, of SEXUAL and proletarian origin. In bringing +too many children into the world, in adding to the total of misery, in +intensifying the evils of overcrowding, the proletariat itself +increases the burden of organized labor; even of the Socialist and +Syndicalist organizations themselves with a surplus of the docilely +inefficient, with those great uneducable and unorganizable masses. +With surprisingly few exceptions, Marxians of all countries have +docilely followed their master in rejecting, with bitterness and +vindictiveness that is difficult to explain, the principles and +teachings of Birth Control. + +Hunger alone is not responsible for the bitter struggle for existence +we witness to-day in our over-advertised civilization. Sex, +uncontrolled, misdirected, over-stimulated and misunderstood, has run +riot at the instigation of priest, militarist and exploiter. +Uncontrolled sex has rendered the proletariat prostrate, the +capitalist powerful. In this continuous, unceasing alliance of sexual +instinct and hunger we find the reason for the decline of all the +finer sentiments. These instincts tear asunder the thin veils of +culture and hypocrisy and expose to our gaze the dark sufferings of +gaunt humanity. So have we become familiar with the everyday +spectacle of distorted bodies, of harsh and frightful diseases +stalking abroad in the light of day; of misshapen heads and visages of +moron and imbecile; of starving children in city streets and schools. +This is the true soil of unspeakable crimes. Defect and delinquency +join hands with disease, and accounts of inconceivable and revolting +vices are dished up in the daily press. When the majority of men and +women are driven by the grim lash of sex and hunger in the unending +struggle to feed themselves and to carry the dead-weight of dead and +dying progeny, when little children are forced into factories, +streets, and shops, education--including even education in the Marxian +dogmas--is quite impossible; and civilization is more completely +threatened than it ever could be by pestilence or war. + +But, it will be pointed out, the working class has advanced. Power +has been acquired by labor unions and syndicates. In the beginning +power was won by the principle of the restriction of numbers. The +device of refusing to admit more than a fixed number of new members to +the unions of the various trades has been justified as necessary for +the upholding of the standard of wages and of working conditions. +This has been the practice in precisely those unions which have been +able through years of growth and development to attain tangible +strength and power. Such a principle of restriction is necessary in +the creation of a firmly and deeply rooted trunk or central +organization furnishing a local center for more extended organization. +It is upon this great principle of restricted number that the labor +unions have generated and developed power. They have acquired this +power without any religious emotionalism, without subscribing to +metaphysical or economic theology. For the millenium and the earthly +paradise to be enjoyed at some indefinitely future date, the union +member substitutes the very real politics of organization with its +resultant benefits. He increases his own independence and comfort and +that of his family. He is immune to superstitious belief in and +respect for the mysterious power of political or economic nostrums to +reconstruct human society according to the Marxian formula. + +In rejecting the Marxian hypothesis as superficial and fragmentary, we +do so not because of its so-called revolutionary character, its threat +to the existing order of things, but rather because of its +superficial, emotional and religious character and its deleterious +effect upon the life of reason. Like other schemes advanced by the +alarmed and the indignant, it relies too much upon moral fervor and +enthusiasm. To build any social program upon the shifting sands of +sentiment and feeling, of indignation or enthusiasm, is a dangerous +and foolish task. On the other hand, we should not minimize the +importance of the Socialist movement in so valiantly and so +courageously battling against the stagnating complacency of our +conservatives and reactionaries, under whose benign imbecility the +defective and diseased elements of humanity are encouraged ``full +speed ahead'' in their reckless and irresponsible swarming and +spawning. Nevertheless, as George Drysdale pointed out nearly seventy +years ago; + +``...If we ignore this and other sexual subjects, we may do whatever +else we like: we may bully, we may bluster, we may rage, We may foam +at the mouth; we may tear down Heaven with our prayers, we may exhaust +ourselves with weeping over the sorrows of the poor; we may narcotize +ourselves and others with the opiate of Christian resignation; we may +dissolve the realities of human woe in a delusive mirage of poetry and +ideal philosophy; we may lavish our substance in charity, and labor +over possible or impossible Poor Laws; we may form wild dreams of +Socialism, industrial regiments, universal brotherhood, red republics, +or unexampled revolutions; we may strangle and murder each other, we +may persecute and despise those whose sexual necessities force them to +break through our unnatural moral codes; we may burn alive if we +please the prostitutes and the adulterers; we may break our own and +our neighbor's hearts against the adamantine laws that surround us, +but not one step, not one shall we advance, till we acknowledge these +laws, and adopt the only possible mode in which they can be obeyed.'' +These words were written in 1854. Recent events have accentuated +their stinging truth. + +[1] Marx: ``Capital.'' Vol. I, p. 675. +[2] Op. cit. pp, 695, 707, 709. +[3] Fabian Essays in Socialism. p. 21. +[4] Uncontrolled Breeding, By Adelyne More. p. 84. +[5] For a sympathetic treatment of modern psychological research as + bearing on Communism, by two convinced Communists see ``Creative + Revolution,'' by Eden and Cedar Paul. +[6] Neo-Malthusianisme et Socialisme, p. 22. + + + +CHAPTER VIII: Dangers of Cradle Competition + +Eugenics has been defined as ``the study of agencies under social +control that may improve or impair the racial qualities of future +generations, either mentally or physically.'' While there is no +inherent conflict between Socialism and Eugenics, the latter is, +broadly, the antithesis of the former. In its propaganda, Socialism +emphasizes the evil effects of our industrial and economic system. It +insists upon the necessity of satisfying material needs, upon +sanitation, hygiene, and education to effect the transformation of +society. The Socialist insists that healthy humanity is impossible +without a radical improvement of the social--and therefore of the +economic and industrial--environment. The Eugenist points out that +heredity is the great determining factor in the lives of men and +women. Eugenics is the attempt to solve the problem from the +biological and evolutionary point of view. You may ring all the +changes possible on ``Nurture'' or environment, the Eugenist may say +to the Socialist, but comparatively little can be effected until you +control biological and hereditary elements of the problem. Eugenics +thus aims to seek out the root of our trouble, to study humanity as a +kinetic, dynamic, evolutionary organism, shifting and changing with +the successive generations, rising and falling, cleansing itself of +inherent defects, or under adverse and dysgenic influences, sinking +into degeneration and deterioration. + +``Eugenics'' was first defined by Sir Francis Galton in his ``Human +Faculty'' in 1884, and was subsequently developed into a science and +into an educational effort. Galton's ideal was the rational breeding +of human beings. The aim of Eugenics, as defined by its founder, is +to bring as many influences as can be reasonably employed, to cause +the useful classes of the community to contribute MORE than their +proportion to the next generation. Eugenics thus concerns itself with +all influences that improve the inborn qualities of a race; also with +those that develop them to the utmost advantage. It is, in short, the +attempt to bring reason and intelligence to bear upon HEREDITY. But +Galton, in spite of the immense value of this approach and his great +stimulation to criticism, was completely unable to formulate a +definite and practical working program. He hoped at length to +introduce Eugenics ``into the national conscience like a new +religion....I see no impossibility in Eugenics becoming a religious +dogma among mankind, but its details must first be worked out +sedulously in the study. Over-zeal leading to hasty action, would do +harm by holding out expectations of a new golden age, which will +certainly be falsified and cause the science to be discredited. The +first and main point is to secure the general intellectual acceptance +of Eugenics as a hopeful and most important study. Then, let its +principles work into the heart of the nation, who will gradually give +practical effect to them in ways that we may not wholly foresee.''[1] + +Galton formulated a general law of inheritance which declared that an +individual receives one-half of his inheritance from his two parents, +one-fourth from his four grandparents, one-eighth from his great- +grandparents, one-sixteenth from his great-great grandparents, and so +on by diminishing fractions to his primordial ancestors, the sum of +all these fractions added together contributing to the whole of the +inherited make-up. The trouble with this generalization, from the +modern Mendelian point of view, is that it fails to define what +``characters'' one would get in the one-half that came from one's +parents, or the one-fourth from one's grandparents. The whole of our +inheritance is not composed of these indefinitely made up fractional +parts. We are interested rather in those more specific traits or +characters, mental or physical, which, in the Mendelian view, are +structural and functional units, making up a mosaic rather than a +blend. The laws of heredity are concerned with the precise behavior, +during a series of generations, of these specific unit characters. +This behavior, as the study of Genetics shows, may be determined in +lesser organisms by experiment. Once determined, they are subject to +prophecy. + +The problem of human heredity is now seen to be infinitely more +complex than imagined by Galton and his followers, and the optimistic +hope of elevating Eugenics to the level of a religion is a futile one. +Most of the Eugenists, including Professor Karl Pearson and his +colleagues of the Eugenics Laboratory of the University of London and +of the biometric laboratory in University College, have retained the +age-old point of view of ``Nature vs. Nurture'' and have attempted to +show the predominating influence of Heredity AS OPPOSED TO +Environment. This may be true; but demonstrated and repeated in +investigation after investigation, it nevertheless remains fruitless +and unprofitable from the practical point of view. + +We should not minimize the great outstanding service of Eugenics for +critical and diagnostic investigations. It demonstrates, not in terms +of glittering generalization but in statistical studies of +investigations reduced to measurement and number, that uncontrolled +fertility is universally correlated with disease, poverty, +overcrowding and the transmission of hereditable taints. Professor +Pearson and his associates show us that ``if fertility be correlated +with anti-social hereditary characters, a population will inevitably +degenerate.'' + +This degeneration has already begun. Eugenists demonstrate that two- +thirds of our manhood of military age are physically too unfit to +shoulder a rifle; that the feeble-minded, the syphilitic, the +irresponsible and the defective breed unhindered; that women are +driven into factories and shops on day-shift and night-shift; that +children, frail carriers of the torch of life, are put to work at an +early age; that society at large is breeding an ever-increasing army +of under-sized, stunted and dehumanized slaves; that the vicious +circle of mental and physical defect, delinquency and beggary is +encouraged, by the unseeing and unthinking sentimentality of our age, +to populate asylum, hospital and prison. + +All these things the Eugenists sees and points out with a courage +entirely admirable. But as a positive program of redemption, orthodox +Eugenics can offer nothing more ``constructive'' than a renewed +``cradle competition'' between the ``fit'' and the ``unfit.'' It sees +that the most responsible and most intelligent members of society are +the less fertile; that the feeble-minded are the more fertile. Herein +lies the unbalance, the great biological menace to the future of +civilization. Are we heading to biological destruction, toward the +gradual but certain attack upon the stocks of intelligence and racial +health by the sinister forces of the hordes of irresponsibility and +imbecility? This is not such a remote danger as the optimistic +Eugenist might suppose. The mating of the moron with a person of +sound stock may, as Dr. Tredgold points out, gradually disseminate +this trait far and wide until it undermines the vigor and efficiency +of an entire nation and an entire race. This is no idle fancy. We +must take it into account if we wish to escape the fate that has +befallen so many civilizations in the past. + +``It is, indeed, more than likely that the presence of this impairment +in a mitigated form is responsible for no little of the defective +character, the diminution of mental and moral fiber at the present +day,'' states Dr. Tredgold.[2] Such populations, this distinguished +authority might have added, form the veritable ``cultures'' not only +for contagious physical diseases but for mental instability and +irresponsibility also. They are susceptible, exploitable, hysterical, +non-resistant to external suggestion. Devoid of stamina, such folk +become mere units in a mob. ``The habit of crowd-making is daily +becoming a more serious menace to civilization,'' writes Everett Dean +Martin. ``Our society is becoming a veritable babel of gibbering +crowds.''[3] It would be only the incorrigible optimist who refused to +see the integral relation between this phenomenon and the +indiscriminate breeding by which we recruit our large populations. + +The danger of recruiting our numbers from the most ``fertile stocks'' +is further emphasized when we recall that in a democracy like that of +the United States every man and woman is permitted a vote in the +government, and that it is the representatives of this grade of +intelligence who may destroy our liberties, and who may thus be the +most far-reaching peril to the future of civilization. + +``It is a pathological worship of mere number,'' writes Alleyne +Ireland, ``which has inspired all the efforts--the primary, the direct +election of Senators, the initiative, the recall and the referendum-- +to cure the evils of mob rule by increasing the size of the mob and +extending its powers.''[4] + +Equality of political power has thus been bestowed upon the lowest +elements of our population. We must not be surprised, therefore, at +the spectacle of political scandal and graft, of the notorious and +universally ridiculed low level of intelligence and flagrant stupidity +exhibited by our legislative bodies. The Congressional Record mirrors +our political imbecility. + +All of these dangers and menaces are acutely realized by the +Eugenists; it is to them that we are most indebted for the proof that +reckless spawning carries with it the seeds of destruction. But +whereas the Galtonians reveal themselves as unflinching in their +investigation and in their exhibition of fact and diagnoses of +symptoms, they do not on the other hand show much power in suggesting +practical and feasible remedies. + +On its scientific side, Eugenics suggests the reestabilishment of the +balance between the fertility of the ``fit'' and the ``unfit.'' The +birth-rate among the normal and healthier and finer stocks of +humanity, is to be increased by awakening among the ``fit'' the +realization of the dangers of a lessened birth-rate in proportion to +the reckless breeding among the ``unfit.'' By education, by +persuasion, by appeals to racial ethics and religious motives, the +ardent Eugenist hopes to increase the fertility of the ``fit.'' +Professor Pearson thinks that it is especially necessary to awaken the +hardiest stocks to this duty. These stocks, he says, are to be found +chiefly among the skilled artisan class, the intelligent working +class. Here is a fine combination of health and hardy vigor, of sound +body and sound mind. + +Professor Pearson and his school of biometrics here ignore or at least +fail to record one of those significant ``correlations'' which form +the basis of his method. The publications of the Eugenics Laboratory +all tend to show that a high rate of fertility is correlated with +extreme poverty, recklessness, deficiency and delinquency; similarly, +that among the more intelligent, this rate of fertility decreases. But +the scientific Eugenists fail to recognize that this restraint of +fecundity is due to a deliberate foresight and is a conscious effort +to elevate standards of living for the family and the children of the +responsible--and possibly more selfish--sections of the community. +The appeal to enter again into competitive child-bearing, for the +benefit of the nation or the race, or any other abstraction, will fall +on deaf ears. + +Pearson has done invaluable work in pointing out the fallacies and the +false conclusions of the ordinary statisticians. But when he attempts +to show by the methods of biometrics that not only the first child but +also the second, are especially liable to suffer from transmissible +pathological defects, such as insanity, criminality and tuberculosis, +he fails to recognize that this tendency is counterbalanced by the +high mortality rate among later children. If first and second +children reveal a greater percentage of heritable defect, it is +because the later born children are less liable to survive the +conditions produced by a large family. + +In passing, we should here recognize the difficulties presented by the +idea of ``fit'' and ``unfit.'' Who is to decide this question? The +grosser, the more obvious, the undeniably feeble-minded should, +indeed, not only be discouraged but prevented from propagating their +kind. But among the writings of the representative Eugenists one +cannot ignore the distinct middle-class bias that prevails. As that +penetrating critic, F. W. Stella Browne, has said in another +connection, ``The Eugenics Education Society has among its numbers +many most open-minded and truly progressive individuals but the +official policy it has pursued for years has been inspired by class- +bias and sex bias. The society laments with increasing vehemence the +multiplication of the less fortunate classes at a more rapid rate than +the possessors of leisure and opportunity. (I do not think it relevant +here to discuss whether the innate superiority of endowment in the +governing class really is so overwhelming as to justify the Eugenics +Education Society's peculiar use of the terms `fit' and `unfit'!) Yet +it has persistently refused to give any help toward extending the +knowledge of contraceptives to the exploited classes. Similarly, +though the Eugenics Review, the organ of the society, frequently +laments the `selfishness' of the refusal of maternity by healthy and +educated women of the professional classes, I have yet to learn that +it has made any official pronouncement on the English illegitimacy +laws or any organized effort toward defending the unmarried mother.'' + +This peculiarly Victorian reticence may be inherited from the founder +of Eugenics. Galton declared that the ``Bohemian'' element in the +Anglo-Saxon race is destined to perish, and ``the sooner it goes, the +happier for mankind.'' The trouble with any effort of trying to +divide humanity into the ``fit'' and the ``unfit,'' is that we do not +want, as H. G. Wells recently pointed out,[5] to breed for uniformity +but for variety. ``We want statesmen and poets and musicians and +philosophers and strong men and delicate men and brave men. The +qualities of one would be the weaknesses of the other.'' We want, +most of all, genius. + +Proscription on Galtonian lines would tend to eliminate many of the +great geniuses of the world who were not only ``Bohemian,'' but +actually and pathologically abnormal--men like Rousseau, Dostoevsky, +Chopin, Poe, Schumann, Nietzsche, Comte, Guy de Maupassant,--and how +many others? But such considerations should not lead us into error of +concluding that such men were geniuses merely because they were +pathological specimens, and that the only way to produce a genius is +to breed disease and defect. It only emphasizes the dangers of +external standards of ``fit'' and ``unfit.'' + +These limitations are more strikingly shown in the types of so-called +``eugenic'' legislation passed or proposed by certain enthusiasts. +Regulation, compulsion and prohibitions affected and enacted by +political bodies are the surest methods of driving the whole problem +under-ground. As Havelock Ellis has pointed out, the absurdity and +even hopelessness of effecting Eugenic improvement by placing on the +statute books prohibitions of legal matrimony to certain classes of +people, reveal the weakness of those Eugenists who minimize or +undervalue the importance of environment as a determining factor. +They affirm that heredity is everything and environment nothing, yet +forget that it is precisely those who are most universally subject to +bad environment who procreate most copiously, most recklessly and most +disastrously. Such marriage laws are based for the most part on the +infantile assumption that procreation is absolutely dependent upon the +marriage ceremony, an assumption usually coupled with the +complementary one that the only purpose in marriage is procreation. +Yet it is a fact so obvious that it is hardly worth stating that the +most fertile classes who indulge in the most dysgenic type of +procreating--the feeble-minded--are almost totally unaffected by +marriage laws and marriage-ceremonies. + +As for the sterilization of habitual criminals, not merely must we +know more of heredity and genetics in general, but also acquire more +certainty of the justice of our laws and the honesty of their +administration before we can make rulings of fitness or unfitness +merely upon the basis of a respect for law. On this point the eminent +William Bateson writes:[6] ``Criminals are often feeble-minded, but as +regards those that are not, the fact that a man is for the purposes of +Society classified as a criminal, tells me little as to his value, +still less as to the possible value of his offspring. It is a fault +inherent in criminal jurisprudence, based on non-biological data, that +the law must needs take the nature of the offenses rather than that of +the offenders as the basis of classification. A change in the right +direction has begun, but the problem is difficult and progress will be +very slow....We all know of persons convicted, perhaps even +habitually, whom the world could ill spare. Therefore I hesitate to +proscribe the criminal. Proscription...is a weapon with a very nasty +recoil. Might not some with equal cogency proscribe army contractors +and their accomplices, the newspaper patriots? The crimes of the +prison population are petty offenses by comparison, and the +significance we attach to them is a survival of other days. Felonies +may be great events, locally, but they do not induce catastrophies. +The proclivities of the war-makers are infinitely more dangerous than +those of the aberrant beings whom from time to time the law may dub as +criminal. Consistent and potentous selfishness, combined with dulness +of imagination is probably just as transmissible as want of self- +control, though destitute of the amiable qualities not rarely +associated with the genetic composition of persons of unstable mind.'' + +In this connection, we should note another type of ``respectable'' +criminality noted by Havelock Ellis: ``If those persons who raise the +cry of `race-suicide' in face of the decline of the birth-rate really +had the knowledge and the intelligence to realize the manifold evils +which they are invoking, they would deserve to be treated as +criminals.'' + +Our debt to the science of Eugenics is great in that it directs our +attention to the biological nature of humanity. Yet there is too +great a tendency among the thinkers of this school, to restrict their +ideas of sex to its expression as a purely procreative function. +Compulsory legislation which would make the inevitably futile attempt +to prohibit one of the most beneficent and necessary of human +expressions, or regulate it into the channels of preconceived +philosophies, would reduce us to the unpleasant days predicted by +William Blake, when + +``Priests in black gowns will be walking their rounds And binding +with briars our joys and desires.'' + +Eugenics is chiefly valuable in its negative aspects. It is +``negative Eugenics'' that has studied the histories of such families +as the Jukeses and the Kallikaks, that has pointed out the network of +imbecility and feeble-mindedness that has been sedulously spread +through all strata of society. On its so-called positive or +constructive side, it fails to awaken any permanent interest. +``Constructive'' Eugenics aims to arouse the enthusiasm or the +interest of the people in the welfare of the world fifteen or twenty +generations in the future. On its negative side it shows us that we +are paying for and even submitting to the dictates of an ever +increasing, unceasingly spawning class of human beings who never +should have been born at all--that the wealth of individuals and of +states is being diverted from the development and the progress of +human expression and civilization. + +While it is necessary to point out the importance of ``heredity'' as a +determining factor in human life, it is fatal to elevate it to the +position of an absolute. As with environment, the concept of heredity +derives its value and its meaning only in so far as it is embodied and +made concrete in generations of living organisms. Environment and +heredity are not antagonistic. Our problem is not that of ``Nature +vs. Nurture,'' but rather of Nature x Nurture, of heredity multiplied +by environment, if we may express it thus. The Eugenist who overlooks +the importance of environment as a determining factor in human life, +is as short-sighted as the Socialist who neglects the biological +nature of man. We cannot disentangle these two forces, except in +theory. To the child in the womb, said Samuel Butler, the mother is +``environment.'' She is, of course, likewise ``heredity.'' The age- +old discussion of ``Nature vs. Nurture'' has been threshed out time +after time, usually fruitlessly, because of a failure to recognize the +indivisibility of these biological factors. The opposition or +antagonism between them is an artificial and academic one, having no +basis in the living organism. + +The great principle of Birth Control offers the means whereby the +individual may adapt himself to and even control the forces of +environment and heredity. Entirely apart from its Malthusian aspect +or that of the population question, Birth Control must be recognized, +as the Neo-Malthusians pointed out long ago, not ``merely as the key +of the social position,'' and the only possible and practical method +of human generation, but as the very pivot of civilization. Birth +Control which has been criticized as negative and destructive, is +really the greatest and most truly eugenic method, and its adoption as +part of the program of Eugenics would immediately give a concrete and +realistic power to that science. As a matter of fact, Birth Control +has been accepted by the most clear thinking and far seeing of the +Eugenists themselves as the most constructive and necessary of the +means to racial health.[7] + +[1] Galton. Essays in Eugenics, p. 43. +[2] Eugenics Review, Vol. XIII, p. 349. +[3] Cf. Martin, The Behavior of Crowds, p. 6. +[4] Cf. Democracy and the Human Equation. E. P. Dutton & Co., 1921. +[5] Cf. The Salvaging of Civilization. +[6] Common Sense in Racial Problems. By W. Bateson, M. A. A., F. R. S. +[7] Among these are Dean W. R. Inge, Professor J. Arthur Thomson, + Dr. Havelock Ellis, Professor William Bateson, Major Leonard Darwin + and Miss Norah March. + + + +CHAPTER IX: A Moral Necessity + + I went to the Garden of Love, + And saw what I never had seen; + A Chapel was built in the midst, + Where I used to play on the green. + + And the gates of this Chapel were shut, + And ``Thou shalt not'' writ over the door; + So I turned to the Garden of Love + That so many sweet flowers bore. + + And I saw it was filled with graves, + And tombstones where flowers should be; + And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds, + And binding with briars my joys and desires. + +William Blake + + +Orthodox opposition to Birth Control is formulated in the official +protest of the National Council of Catholic Women against the +resolution passed by the New York State Federation of Women's Clubs +which favored the removal of all obstacles to the spread of +information regarding practical methods of Birth Control. The +Catholic statement completely embodies traditional opposition to Birth +Control. It affords a striking contrast by which we may clarify and +justify the ethical necessity for this new instrument of civilization +as the most effective basis for practical and scientific morality. +``The authorities at Rome have again and again declared that all +positive methods of this nature are immoral and forbidden,'' states +the National Council of Catholic Women. ``There is no question of the +lawfulness of birth restriction through abstinence from the relations +which result in conception. The immorality of Birth Control as it is +practised and commonly understood, consists in the evils of the +particular method employed. These are all contrary to the moral law +because they are unnatural, being a perversion of a natural function. +Human faculties are used in such a way as to frustrate the natural end +for which these faculties were created. This is always intrinsically +wrong--as wrong as lying and blasphemy. No supposed beneficial +consequence can make good a practice which is, in itself, immoral.... + +``The evil results of the practice of Birth Control are numerous. +Attention will be called here to only three. The first is the +degradation of the marital relation itself, since the husband and wife +who indulge in any form of this practice come to have a lower idea of +married life. They cannot help coming to regard each other to a great +extent as mutual instruments of sensual gratification, rather than as +cooperators with the Creating in bringing children into the world. +This consideration may be subtle but it undoubtedly represents the +facts. + +``In the second place, the deliberate restriction of the family +through these immoral practices deliberately weakens self-control and +the capacity for self-denial, and increases the love of ease and +luxury. The best indication of this is that the small family is much +more prevalent in the classes that are comfortable and well-to-do than +among those whose material advantages are moderate or small. The +theory of the advocates of Birth Control is that those parents who are +comfortably situated should have a large number of children (SIC!) +while the poor should restrict their offspring to a much smaller +number. This theory does not work, for the reason that each married +couple have their own idea of what constitutes unreasonable hardship +in the matter of bearing and rearing children. A large proportion of +the parents who are addicted to Birth Control practices are +sufficiently provided with worldly goods to be free from apprehension +on the economic side; nevertheless, they have small families because +they are disinclined to undertake the other burdens involved in +bringing up a more numerous family. A practice which tends to produce +such exaggerated notions of what constitutes hardship, which leads men +and women to cherish such a degree of ease, makes inevitably for +inefficiency, a decline in the capacity to endure and to achieve, and +for a general social decadence. + +``Finally, Birth Control leads sooner or later to a decline in +population....'' (The case of France is instanced.) But it is +essentially the moral question that alarms the Catholic women, for the +statement concludes: ``The further effect of such proposed legislation +will inevitably be a lowering both of public and private morals. What +the fathers of this country termed indecent and forbade the mails to +carry, will, if such legislation is carried through, be legally +decent. The purveyors of sexual license and immorality will have the +opportunity to send almost anything they care to write through the +mails on the plea that it is sex information. Not only the married +but also the unmarried will be thus affected; the ideals of the young +contaminated and lowered. The morals of the entire nation will +suffer. + +``The proper attitude of Catholics...is clear. They should watch and +oppose all attempts in state legislatures and in Congress to repeal +the laws which now prohibit the dissemination of information +concerning Birth Control. Such information will be spread only too +rapidly despite existing laws. To repeal these would greatly +accelerate this deplorable movement.[1]'' + +The Catholic position has been stated in an even more extreme form by +Archbishop Patrick J. Hayes of the archdiocese of New York. In a +``Christmas Pastoral'' this dignitary even went to the extent of +declaring that ``even though some little angels in the flesh, through +the physical or mental deformities of their parents, may appear to +human eyes hideous, misshapen, a blot on civilized society, we must +not lose sight of this Christian thought that under and within such +visible malformation, lives an immortal soul to be saved and glorified +for all eternity among the blessed in heaven.''[2] + +With the type of moral philosophy expressed in this utterance, we need +not argue. It is based upon traditional ideas that have had the +practical effect of making this world a vale of tears. Fortunately +such words carry no weight with those who can bring free and keen as +well as noble minds to the consideration of the matter. To them the +idealism of such an utterance appears crude and cruel. The menace to +civilization of such orthodoxy, if it be orthodoxy, lies in the fact +that its powerful exponents may be fore a time successful not merely +in influencing the conduct of their adherents but in checking freedom +of thought and discussion. To this, with all the vehemence of +emphasis at our command, we object. From what Archbishop Hayes +believes concerning the future blessedness in Heaven of the souls of +those who are born into this world as hideous and misshapen beings he +has a right to seek such consolation as may be obtained; but we who +are trying to better the conditions of this world believe that a +healthy, happy human race is more in keeping with the laws of God, +than disease, misery and poverty perpetuating itself generation after +generation. Furthermore, while conceding to Catholic or other +churchmen full freedom to preach their own doctrines, whether of +theology or morals, nevertheless when they attempt to carry these +ideas into legislative acts and force their opinions and codes upon +the non-Catholics, we consider such action an interference with the +principles of democracy and we have a right to protest. + +Religious propaganda against Birth Control is crammed with +contradiction and fallacy. It refutes itself. Yet it brings the +opposing views into vivid contrast. In stating these differences we +should make clear that advocates of Birth Control are not seeking to +attack the Catholic church. We quarrel with that church, however, +when it seeks to assume authority over non-Catholics and to dub their +behavior immoral because they do not conform to the dictatorship of +Rome. The question of bearing and rearing children we hold is the +concern of the mother and the potential mother. If she delegates the +responsibility, the ethical education, to an external authority, that +is her affair. We object, however, to the State or the Church which +appoints itself as arbiter and dictator in this sphere and attempts to +force unwilling women into compulsory maternity. + +When Catholics declare that ``The authorities at Rome have again and +again declared that all positive methods of this nature are immoral +and forbidden,'' they do so upon the assumption that morality consists +in conforming to laws laid down and enforced by external authority, in +submission to decrees and dicta imposed from without. In this case, +they decide in a wholesale manner the conduct of millions, demanding +of them not the intelligent exercise of their own individual judgment +and discrimination, but unquestioning submission and conformity to +dogma. The Church thus takes the place of all-powerful parents, and +demands of its children merely that they should obey. In my belief +such a philosophy hampers the development of individual intelligence. +Morality then becomes a more or less successful attempt to conform to +a code, instead of an attempt to bring reason and intelligence to bear +upon the solution of each individual human problem. + +But, we read on, Birth Control methods are not merely contrary to +``moral law,'' but forbidden because they are ``unnatural,'' being +``the perversion of a natural function.'' This, of course, is the +weakest link in the whole chain. Yet ``there is no question of the +lawfulness of birth restriction through abstinence''--as though +abstinence itself were not unnatural! For more than a thousand years +the Church was occupied with the problem of imposing abstinence on its +priesthood, its most educated and trained body of men, educated to +look upon asceticism as the finest ideal; it took one thousand years +to convince the Catholic priesthood that abstinence was ``natural'' or +practicable.[3] Nevertheless, there is still this talk of abstinence, +self-control, and self-denial, almost in the same breath with the +condemnation of Birth Control as ``unnatural.'' + +If it is our duty to act as ``cooperators with the Creator'' to bring +children into the world, it is difficult to say at what point our +behavior is ``unnatural.'' If it is immoral and ``unnatural'' to +prevent an unwanted life from coming into existence, is it not immoral +and ``unnatural'' to remain unmarried from the age of puberty? Such +casuistry is unconvincing and feeble. We need only point out that +rational intelligence is also a ``natural'' function, and that it is +as imperative for us to use the faculties of judgment, criticism, +discrimination of choice, selection and control, all the faculties of +the intelligence, as it is to use those of reproduction. It is +certainly dangerous ``to frustrate the natural ends for which these +faculties were created.'' This also, is always intrinsically wrong-- +as wrong as lying and blasphemy--and infinitely more devastating. +Intelligence is as natural to us as any other faculty, and it is fatal +to moral development and growth to refuse to use it and to delegate to +others the solution of our individual problems. The evil will not be +that one's conduct is divergent from current and conventional moral +codes. There may be every outward evidence of conformity, but this +agreement may be arrived at, by the restriction and suppression of +subjective desires, and the more or less successful attempt at mere +conformity. Such ``morality'' would conceal an inner conflict. The +fruits of this conflict would be neurosis and hysteria on the one +hand; or concealed gratification of suppressed desires on the other, +with a resultant hypocrisy and cant. True morality cannot be based on +conformity. There must be no conflict between subjective desire and +outward behavior. + +To object to these traditional and churchly ideas does not by any +means imply that the doctrine of Birth Control is anti-Christian. On +the contrary, it may be profoundly in accordance with the Sermon on +the Mount. One of the greatest living theologians and most +penetrating students of the problems of civilization is of this +opinion. In an address delivered before the Eugenics Education +Society of London,[4] William Ralph Inge, the Very Reverend Dean of +St. Paul's Cathedral, London, pointed out that the doctrine of Birth +Control was to be interpreted as of the very essence of Christianity. + +``We should be ready to give up all our theories,'' he asserted, ``if +science proved that we were on the wrong lines. And we can +understand, though we profoundly disagree with, those who oppose us on +the grounds of authority....We know where we are with a man who says, +`Birth Control is forbidden by God; we prefer poverty, unemployment, +war, the physical, intellectual and moral degeneration of the people, +and a high deathrate to any interference with the universal command to +be fruitful and multiply'; but we have no patience with those who say +that we can have unrestricted and unregulated propagation without +those consequences. It is a great part of our work to press home to +the public mind the alternative that lies before us. Either rational +selection must take the place of the natural selection which the +modern State will not allow to act, or we must go on deteriorating. +When we can convince the public of this, the opposition of organized +religion will soon collapse or become ineffective.'' Dean Inge +effectively answers those who have objected to the methods of Birth +Control as ``immoral'' and in contradiction and inimical to the +teachings of Christ. Incidentally he claims that those who are not +blinded by prejudices recognize that ``Christianity aims at saving the +soul--the personality, the nature, of man, not his body or his +environment. According to Christianity, a man is saved, not by what +he has, or knows, or does, but by what he is. It treats all the +apparatus of life with a disdain as great as that of the biologist; so +long as a man is inwardly healthy, it cares very little whether he is +rich or poor, learned or simple, and even whether he is happy, or +unhappy. It attaches no importance to quantitative measurements of +any kind. The Christian does not gloat over favorable trade- +statistics, nor congratulate himself on the disparity between the +number of births and deaths. For him...the test of the welfare of a +country is the quality of human beings whom it produces. Quality is +everything, quantity is nothing. And besides this, the Christian +conception of a kingdom of God upon the earth teaches us to turn our +eyes to the future, and to think of the welfare of posterity as a +thing which concerns us as much as that of our own generation. This +welfare, as conceived by Christianity, is of course something +different from external prosperity; it is to be the victory of +intrinsic worth and healthiness over all the false ideals and deep- +seated diseases which at present spoil civilization.'' + +``It is not political religion with which I am concerned,'' Dean Inge +explained, ``but the convictions of really religious persons; and I do +not think that we need despair of converting them to our views.'' + +Dean Inge believes Birth Control is an essential part of Eugenics, and +an essential part of Christian morality. On this point he asserts: +``We do wish to remind our orthodox and conservative friends that the +Sermon on the Mount contains some admirably clear and unmistakable +eugenic precepts. `Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of +thistles? A corrupt tree cannot bring forth good fruit, neither can a +good tree bring forth evil fruit. Every tree which bringeth not forth +good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.' We wish to apply +these words not only to the actions of individuals, which spring from +their characters, but to the character of individuals, which spring +from their inherited qualities. This extension of the scope of the +maxim seems to me quite legitimate. Men do not gather grapes of +thorns. As our proverb says, you cannot make a silk purse out of a +sow's ear. If we believe this, and do not act upon it by trying to +move public opinion towards giving social reform, education and +religion a better material to work upon, we are sinning against the +light, and not doing our best to bring in the Kingdom of God upon +earth.'' + +As long as sexual activity is regarded in a dualistic and +contradictory light,--in which it is revealed either as the instrument +by which men and women ``cooperate with the Creator'' to bring +children into the world, on the one hand; and on the other, as the +sinful instrument of self-gratification, lust and sensuality, there is +bound to be an endless conflict in human conduct, producing ever +increasing misery, pain and injustice. In crystallizing and codifying +this contradiction, the Church not only solidified its own power over +men but reduced women to the most abject and prostrate slavery. It +was essentially a morality that would not ``work.'' The sex instinct +in the human race is too strong to be bound by the dictates of any +church. The church's failure, its century after century of failure, is +now evident on every side: for, having convinced men and women that +only in its baldly propagative phase is sexual expression legitimate, +the teachings of the Church have driven sex under-ground, into secret +channels, strengthened the conspiracy of silence, concentrated men's +thoughts upon the ``lusts of the body,'' have sown, cultivated and +reaped a crop of bodily and mental diseases, and developed a society +congenitally and almost hopelessly unbalanced. How is any progress to +be made, how is any human expression or education possible when women +and men are taught to combat and resist their natural impulses and to +despise their bodily functions? + +Humanity, we are glad to realize, is rapidly freeing itself from this +``morality'' imposed upon it by its self-appointed and self- +perpetuating masters. From a hundred different points the imposing +edifice of this ``morality'' has been and is being attacked. Sincere +and thoughtful defenders and exponents of the teachings of Christ now +acknowledge the falsity of the traditional codes and their malignant +influence upon the moral and physical well-being of humanity. + +Ecclesiastical opposition to Birth Control on the part of certain +representatives of the Protestant churches, based usually on +quotations from the Bible, is equally invalid, and for the same +reason. The attitude of the more intelligent and enlightened clergy +has been well and succinctly expressed by Dean Inge, who, referring to +the ethics of Birth Control, writes: ``THIS IS EMPHATICALLY A MATTER +IN WHICH EVERY MAN AND WOMAN MUST JUDGE FOR THEMSELVES, AND MUST +REFRAIN FROM JUDGING OTHERS.'' We must not neglect the important fact +that it is not merely in the practical results of such a decision, not +in the small number of children, not even in the healthier and better +cared for children, not in the possibility of elevating the living +conditions of the individual family, that the ethical value of Birth +Control alone lies. Precisely because the practice of Birth Control +does demand the exercise of decision, the making of choice, the use of +the reasoning powers, is it an instrument of moral education as well +as of hygienic and racial advance. It awakens the attention of +parents to their potential children. It forces upon the individual +consciousness the question of the standards of living. In a profound +manner it protects and reasserts the inalienable rights of the child- +to-be. + +Psychology and the outlook of modern life are stressing the growth of +independent responsibility and discrimination as the true basis of +ethics. The old traditional morality, with its train of vice, +disease, promiscuity and prostitution, is in reality dying out, +killing itself off because it is too irresponsible and too dangerous +to individual and social well-being. The transition from the old to +the new, like all fundamental changes, is fraught with many dangers. +But it is a revolution that cannot be stopped. + +The smaller family, with its lower infant mortality rate, is, in more +definite and concrete manner than many actions outwardly deemed +``moral,'' the expression of moral judgment and responsibility. It is +the assertion of a standard of living, inspired by the wish to obtain +a fuller and more expressive life for the children than the parents +have enjoyed. If the morality or immorality of any course of conduct +is to be determined by the motives which inspire it, there is +evidently at the present day no higher morality than the intelligent +practice of Birth Control. + +The immorality of many who practise Birth Control lies in not daring +to preach what they practise. What is the secret of the hypocrisy of +the well-to-do, who are willing to contribute generously to charities +and philanthropies, who spend thousands annually in the upkeep and +sustenance of the delinquent, the defective and the dependent; and yet +join the conspiracy of silence that prevents the poorer classes from +learning how to improve their conditions, and elevate their standards +of living? It is as though they were to cry: ``We'll give you +anything except the thing you ask for--the means whereby you may +become responsible and self-reliant in your own lives.'' + +The brunt of this injustice falls on women, because the old +traditional morality is the invention of men. ``No religion, no +physical or moral code,'' wrote the clear-sighted George Drysdale, +``proposed by one sex for the other, can be really suitable. Each +must work out its laws for itself in every department of life.'' In +the moral code developed by the Church, women have been so degraded +that they have been habituated to look upon themselves through the +eyes of men. Very imperfectly have women developed their own self- +consciousness, the realization of their tremendous and supreme +position in civilization. Women can develop this power only in one +way; by the exercise of responsibility, by the exercise of judgment, +reason or discrimination. They need ask for no ``rights.'' They need +only assert power. Only by the exercise of self-guidance and +intelligent self-direction can that inalienable, supreme, pivotal +power be expressed. More than ever in history women need to realize +that nothing can ever come to us from another. Everything we attain +we must owe to ourselves. Our own spirit must vitalize it. Our own +heart must feel it. For we are not passive machines. We are not to +be lectured, guided and molded this way or that. We are alive and +intelligent, we women, no less than men, and we must awaken to the +essential realization that we are living beings, endowed with will, +choice, comprehension, and that every step in life must be taken at +our own initiative. + +Moral and sexual balance in civilization will only be established by +the assertion and expression of power on the part of women. This power +will not be found in any futile seeking for economic independence or +in the aping of men in industrial and business pursuits, nor by +joining battle for the so-called ``single standard.'' Woman's power +can only be expressed and make itself felt when she refuses the task +of bringing unwanted children into the world to be exploited in +industry and slaughtered in wars. When we refuse to produce +battalions of babies to be exploited; when we declare to the nation; +``Show us that the best possible chance in life is given to every +child now brought into the world, before you cry for more! At present +our children are a glut on the market. You hold infant life cheap. +Help us to make the world a fit place for children. When you have +done this, we will bear you children,--then we shall be true women.'' +The new morality will express this power and responsibility on the +part of women. + +``With the realization of the moral responsibility of women,'' writes +Havelock Ellis, ``the natural relations of life spring back to their +due biological adjustment. Motherhood is restored to its natural +sacredness. It becomes the concern of the woman herself, and not of +society nor any individual, to determine the conditions under which +the child shall be conceived....'' + +Moreover, woman shall further assert her power by refusing to remain +the passive instrument of sensual self-gratification on the part of +men. Birth Control, in philosophy and practice, is the destroyer of +that dualism of the old sexual code. It denies that the sole purpose +of sexual activity is procreation; it also denies that sex should be +reduced to the level of sensual lust, or that woman should permit +herself to be the instrument of its satisfaction. In increasing and +differentiating her love demands, woman must elevate sex into another +sphere, whereby it may subserve and enhance the possibility of +individual and human expression. Man will gain in this no less than +woman; for in the age-old enslavement of woman he has enslaved +himself; and in the liberation of womankind, all of humanity will +experience the joys of a new and fuller freedom. + +On this great fundamental and pivotal point new light has been thrown +by Lord Bertrand Dawson, the physician of the King of England. In the +remarkable and epoch-making address at the Birmingham Church Congress +(referred to in my introduction), he spoke of the supreme morality of +the mutual and reciprocal joy in the most intimate relation between +man and woman. Without this reciprocity there can be no civilization +worthy of the name. Lord Dawson suggested that there should be added +to the clauses of marriage in the Prayer Book ``the complete +realization of the love of this man and this woman one for another,'' +and in support of his contention declared that sex love between +husband and wife--apart from parenthood--was something to prize and +cherish for its own sake. The Lambeth Conference, he remarked, +``envisaged a love invertebrate and joyless,'' whereas, in his view, +natural passion in wedlock was not a thing to be ashamed of or unduly +repressed. The pronouncement of the Church of England, as set forth +in Resolution 68 of the Lambeth Conference seems to imply condemnation +of sex love as such, and to imply sanction of sex love only as a means +to an end,--namely, procreation. The Lambeth Resolution stated: + +``In opposition to the teaching which under the name of science and +religion encourages married people in the deliberate cultivation of +sexual union as an end in itself, we steadfastly uphold what must +always be regarded as the governing considerations of Christian +marriage. One is the primary purpose for which marriage exists-- +namely, the continuation of the race through the gift and heritage of +children; the other is the paramount importance in married life of +deliberate and thoughtful self-control.'' + +In answer to this point of view Lord Dawson asserted: + +``Sex love has, apart from parenthood, a purport of its own. It is +something to prize and to cherish for its own sake. It is an +essential part of health and happiness in marriage. And now, if you +will allow me, I will carry this argument a step further. If sexual +union is a gift of God it is worth learning how to use it. Within its +own sphere it should be cultivated so as to bring physical +satisfaction to both, not merely to one....The real problems before us +are those of sex love and child love; and by sex love I mean that love +which involves intercourse or the desire for such. It is necessary to +my argument to emphasize that sex love is one of the dominating forces +of the world. Not only does history show the destinies of nations and +dynasties determined by its sway--but here in our every-day life we +see its influence, direct or indirect, forceful and ubiquitous beyond +aught else. Any statesmanlike view, therefore, will recognize that +here we have an instinct so fundamental, so imperious, that its +influence is a fact which has to be accepted; suppress it you cannot. +You may guide it into healthy channels, but an outlet it will have, +and if that outlet is inadequate and unduly obstructed irregular +channels will be forced.... + +``The attainment of mutual and reciprocal joy in their relations +constitutes a firm bond between two people, and makes for durability +of the marriage tie. Reciprocity in sex love is the physical +counterpart of sympathy. More marriages fail from inadequate and +clumsy sex love than from too much sex love. The lack of proper +understanding is in no small measure responsible for the unfulfilment +of connubial happiness, and every degree of discontent and unhappiness +may, from this cause, occur, leading to rupture of the marriage bond +itself. How often do medical men have to deal with these +difficulties, and how fortunate if such difficulties are disclosed +early enough in married life to be rectified. Otherwise how tragic +may be their consequences, and many a case in the Divorce Court has +thus had its origin. To the foregoing contentions, it might be +objected, you are encouraging passion. My reply would be, passion is +a worthy possession--most men, who are any good, are capable of +passion. You all enjoy ardent and passionate love in art and +literature. Why not give it a place in real life? Why some people +look askance at passion is because they are confusing it with +sensuality. Sex love without passion is a poor, lifeless thing. +Sensuality, on the other hand, is on a level with gluttony--a physical +excess--detached from sentiment, chivalry, or tenderness. It is just +as important to give sex love its place as to avoid its over-emphasis. +Its real and effective restraints are those imposed by a loving and +sympathetic companionship, by the privileges of parenthood, the +exacting claims of career and that civic sense which prompts men to do +social service. Now that the revision of the Prayer Book is receiving +consideration, I should like to suggest with great respect an addition +made to the objects of marriage in the Marriage Service, in these +terms, ``The complete realization of the love of this man and this +woman, the one for the other.'' + +Turning to the specific problem of Birth Control, Lord Dawson +declared, ``that Birth Control is here to stay. It is an established +fact, and for good or evil has to be accepted. Although the extent of +its application can be and is being modified, no denunciations will +abolish it. Despite the influence and condemnations of the Church, it +has been practised in France for well over half a century, and in +Belgium and other Roman Catholic countries is extending. And if the +Roman Catholic Church, with its compact organization, its power of +authority, and its disciplines, cannot check this procedure, it is not +likely that Protestant Churches will be able to do so, for Protestant +religions depend for their strength on the conviction and esteem they +establish in the heads and hearts of their people. The reasons which +lead parents to limit their offspring are sometimes selfish, but more +often honorable and cogent.'' + +A report of the Fabian Society [5] on the morality of Birth Control, +based upon a census conducted under the chairmanship of Sidney Webb, +concludes: ``These facts--which we are bound to face whether we like +them or not--will appear in different lights to different people. In +some quarters it seems to be sufficient to dismiss them with moral +indignation, real or simulated. Such a judgment appears both +irrelevant and futile....If a course of conduct is habitually and +deliberately pursued by vast multitudes of otherwise well-conducted +people, forming probably a majority of the whole educated class of the +nation, we must assume that it does not conflict with their actual +code of morality. They may be intellectually mistaken, but they are +not doing what they feel to be wrong.'' + +The moral justification and ethical necessity of Birth Control need +not be empirically based upon the mere approval of experience and +custom. Its morality is more profound. Birth Control is an ethical +necessity for humanity to-day because it places in our hands a new +instrument of self-expression and self-realization. It gives us +control over one of the primordial forces of nature, to which in the +past the majority of mankind have been enslaved, and by which it has +been cheapened and debased. It arouses us to the possibility of newer +and greater freedom. It develops the power, the responsibility and +intelligence to use this freedom in living a liberated and abundant +life. It permits us to enjoy this liberty without danger of +infringing upon the similar liberty of our fellow men, or of injuring +and curtailing the freedom of the next generation. It shows us that +we need not seek in the amassing of worldly wealth, not in the +illusion of some extra-terrestrial Heaven or earthly Utopia of a +remote future the road to human development. The Kingdom of Heaven is +in a very definite sense within us. Not by leaving our body and our +fundamental humanity behind us, not by aiming to be anything but what +we are, shall we become ennobled or immortal. By knowing ourselves, +by expressing ourselves, by realizing ourselves more completely than +has ever before been possible, not only shall we attain the kingdom +ourselves but we shall hand on the torch of life undimmed to our +children and the children of our children. + +[1] Quoted in the National Catholic Welfare Council Bulletin: + Vol. II, No. 5, p. 21 (January, 1921). +[2] Quoted in daily press, December 19, 1921. +[3] H. C. Lea: History of Sacerdotal Celibacy (Philadelphia, 1967). +[4] Eugenics Review, January 1921. +[5] Fabian Tract No. 131. + + + +CHAPTER X: Science the Ally + + ``There is but one hope. Ignorance, poverty, and vice + must stop populating the world. This cannot be done by + moral suasion. This cannot be done by talk or example. + This cannot be done by religion or by law, by priest + or by hangman. This cannot be done by force, physical + or moral. To accomplish this there is but one way. + Science must make woman the owner, the mistress of herself. + Science, the only possible savior of mankind, must put it + in the power of woman to decide for herself whether she will + or will not become a mother.'' + +Robert G. Ingersoll + + +``Science is the great instrument of social change,'' wrote A. J. +Balfour in 1908; ``all the greater because its object is not change +but knowledge, and its silent appropriation of this dominant function, +amid the din of religious and political strife, is the most vital of +all revolutions which have marked the development of modern +civilization.'' The Birth Control movement has allied itself with +science, and no small part of its present propaganda is to awaken the +interest of scientists to the pivotal importance to civilization of +this instrument. Only with the aid of science is it possible to +perfect a practical method that may be universally taught. As Dean +Inge recently admitted: ``We should be ready to give up all our +theories if science proved that we were on the wrong lines.'' + +One of the principal aims of the American Birth Control League has +been to awaken the interest of scientific investigators and to point +out the rich field for original research opened up by this problem. +The correlation of reckless breeding with defective and delinquent +strains, has not, strangely enough, been subjected to close scientific +scrutiny, nor has the present biological unbalance been traced to its +root. This is a crying necessity of our day, and it cannot be +accomplished without the aid of science. + +Secondary only to the response of women themselves is the awakened +interest of scientists, statisticians, and research workers in every +field. If the clergy and the defenders of traditional morality have +opposed the movement for Birth Control, the response of enlightened +scientists and physicians has been one of the most encouraging aids in +our battle. + +Recent developments in the realm of science,--in psychology, in +physiology, in chemistry and physics--all tend to emphasize the +immediate necessity for human control over the great forces of nature. +The new ideas published by contemporary science are of the utmost +fascination and illumination even to the layman. They perform the +invaluable task of making us look at life in a new light, of searching +close at hand for the solution to heretofore closed mysteries of life. +In this brief chapter, I can touch these ideas only as they have +proved valuable to me. Professor Soddy's ``Science and Life'' is one +of the most inspiring of recent publications in this field; for this +great authority shows us how closely bound up is science with the +whole of Society, how science must help to solve the great and +disastrous unbalance in human society. + +As an example: a whole literature has sprung into being around the +glands, the most striking being ``The Sex Complex'' by Blair Bell. +This author advances the idea of the glandular system as an integral +whole, the glands forming a unity which might be termed the generative +system. Thus is reasserted the radical importance of sexual health to +every individual. The whole tendency of modern physiology and +psychology, in a word, seems gradually coming to the truth that seemed +intuitively to be revealed to that great woman, Olive Schreiner, who, +in ``Woman and Labor'' wrote: ``...Noble is the function of physical +reproduction of humanity by the union of man and woman. Rightly +viewed, that union has in it latent, other and even higher forms of +creative energy and life-dispensing power, and...its history on earth +has only begun; as the first wild rose when it hung from its stem with +its center of stamens and pistils and its single whorl of pale petals +had only begun its course, and was destined, as the ages passed, to +develop stamen upon stamen and petal upon petal, till it assumed a +hundred forms of joy and beauty. + +``And it would indeed almost seem, that, on the path toward the +higher development of sexual life on earth, as man has so often had to +lead in other paths, that here it is perhaps woman, by reason of those +very sexual conditions which in the past have crushed and trammeled +her, who is bound to lead the way and man to follow. So that it may +be at last that sexual love--that tired angel who through the ages has +presided over the march of humanity, with distraught eyes, and +feather-shafts broken and wings drabbled in the mires of lust and +greed, and golden locks caked over with the dust of injustice and +oppression--till those looking at him have sometimes cried in terror, +`He is the Evil and not the Good of life': and have sought if it were +not possible, to exterminate him--shall yet, at last, bathed from the +mire and dust of ages in the streams of friendship and freedom, leap +upwards, with white wings spread, resplendent in the sunshine of a +distant future--the essentially Good and Beautiful of human +existence.'' + +To-day science is verifying the truth of this inspiring vision. +Certain fundamental truths concerning the basic facts of Nature and +humanity especially impress us. A rapid survey may indicate the main +features of this mysterious identity and antagonism. + +Mankind has gone forward by the capture and control of the forces of +Nature. This upward struggle began with the kindling of the first +fire. The domestication of animal life marked another great step in +the long ascent. The capture of the great physical forces, the +discovery of coal and mineral oil, of gas, steam and electricity, and +their adaptation to the everyday uses of mankind, wrought the greatest +changes in the course of civilization. With the discovery of radium +and radioactivity, with the recognition of the vast stores of physical +energy concealed in the atom, humanity is now on the eve of a new +conquest. But, on the other side, humanity has been compelled to +combat continuously those great forces of Nature which have opposed it +at every moment of this long indomitable march out of barbarism. +Humanity has had to wage war against insects, germs, bacteria, which +have spread disease and epidemics and devastation. Humanity has had to +adapt itself to those natural forces it could not conquer but could +only adroitly turn to its own ends. Nevertheless, all along the line, +in colonization, in agriculture, in medicine and in industry, mankind +has triumphed over Nature. + +But lest the recognition of this victory lead us to self-satisfaction +and complacency, we should never forget that this mastery consists to +a great extent in a recognition of the power of those blind forces, +and our adroit control over them. It has been truly said that we +attain no power over Nature until we learn natural laws and conform +and adapt ourselves to them. + +The strength of the human race has been its ability not merely to +subjugate the forces of Nature, but to adapt itself to those it could +not conquer. And even this subjugation, science tells us, has not +resulted from any attempt to suppress, prohibit, or eradicate these +forces, but rather to transform blind and undirected energies to our +own purposes. + +These great natural forces, science now asserts, are not all external. +They are surely concealed within the complex organism of the human +being no less than outside of it. These inner forces are no less +imperative, no less driving and compelling than the external forces of +Nature. As the old conception of the antagonism between body and soul +is broken down, as psychology becomes an ally of physiology and +biology, and biology joins hands with physics and chemistry, we are +taught to see that there is a mysterious unity between these inner and +outer forces. They express themselves in accordance with the same +structural, physical and chemical laws. The development of +civilization in the subjective world, in the sphere of behavior, +conduct and morality, has been precisely the gradual accumulation and +popularization of methods which teach people how to direct, transform +and transmute the driving power of the great natural forces. + +Psychology is now recognizing the forces concealed in the human +organism. In the long process of adaptation to social life, men have +had to harness the wishes and desires born of these inner energies, +the greatest and most imperative of which are Sex and Hunger. From +the beginning of time, men have been driven by Hunger into a thousand +activities. It is Hunger that has created ``the struggle for +existence.'' Hunger has spurred men to the discovery and invention of +methods and ways of avoiding starvation, of storing and exchanging +foods. It has developed primitive barter into our contemporary Wall +Streets. It has developed thrift and economy,--expedients whereby +humanity avoids the lash of King Hunger. The true ``economic +interpretation of history'' might be termed the History of Hunger. + +But no less fundamental, no less imperative, no less ceaseless in its +dynamic energy, has been the great force of Sex. We do not yet know +the intricate but certainly organic relationship between these two +forces. It is obvious that they oppose yet reinforce each other,-- +driving, lashing, spurring mankind on to new conquests or to certain +ruin. Perhaps Hunger and Sex are merely opposite poles of a single +great life force. In the past we have made the mistake of separating +them and attempting to study one of them without the other. Birth +Control emphasizes the need of re-investigation and of knowledge of +their integral relationship, and aims at the solution of the great +problem of Hunger and Sex at one and the same time. + +In the more recent past the effort has been made to control, +civilize, and sublimate the great primordial natural force of sex, +mainly by futile efforts at prohibition, suppression, restraint, and +extirpation. Its revenge, as the psychoanalysts are showing us every +day, has been great. Insanity, hysteria, neuroses, morbid fears and +compulsions, weaken and render useless and unhappy thousands of humans +who are unconscious victims of the attempt to pit individual powers +against this great natural force. In the solution of the problem of +sex, we should bear in mind what the successful method of humanity has +been in its conquest, or rather its control of the great physical and +chemical forces of the external world. Like all other energy, that of +sex is indestructible. By adaptation, control and conscious +direction, we may transmute and sublimate it. Without irreparable +injury to ourselves we cannot attempt to eradicate it or extirpate it. + +The study of atomic energy, the discovery of radioactivity, and the +recognition of potential and latent energies stored in inanimate +matter, throw a brilliant illumination upon the whole problem of sex +and the inner energies of mankind. Speaking of the discovery of +radium, Professor Soddy writes: ``Tracked to earth the clew to a +great secret for which a thousand telescopes might have swept the sky +forever and in vain, lay in a scrap of matter, dowered with something +of the same inexhaustible radiance that hitherto has been the sole +prerogative of the distant stars and sun.'' Radium, this distinguished +authority tells us, has clothed with its own dignity the whole empire +of common matter. + +Much as the atomic theory, with its revelations of the vast treasure +house of radiant energy that lies all about us, offers new hope in the +material world, so the new psychology throws a new light upon human +energies and possibilities of individual expression. Social +reformers, like those scientists of a bygone era who were sweeping the +skies with their telescopes, have likewise been seeking far and wide +for the solution of our social problems in remote and wholesale +panaceas, whereas the true solution is close at hand,--in the human +individual. Buried within each human being lies concealed a vast +store of energy, which awaits release, expression and sublimation. The +individual may profitably be considered as the ``atom'' of society. +And the solution of the problems of society and of civilization will +be brought about when we release the energies now latent and +undeveloped in the individual. Professor Edwin Grant Conklin +expresses the problem in another form; though his analogy, it seems to +me, is open to serious criticism. ``The freedom of the individual +man,'' he writes,[1] ``is to that of society as the freedom of the +single cell is to that of the human being. It is this large freedom +of society, rather than the freedom of the individual, which democracy +offers to the world, free societies, free states, free nations rather +than absolutely free individuals. In all organisms and in all social +organizations, the freedom of the minor units must be limited in order +that the larger unit may achieve a new and greater freedom, and in +social evolution the freedom of individuals must be merged more and +more into the larger freedom of society.'' + +This analogy does not bear analysis. Restraint and constraint of +individual expression, suppression of individual freedom ``for the +good of society'' has been practised from time immemorial; and its +failure is all too evident. There is no antagonism between the good of +the individual and the good of society. The moment civilization is +wise enough to remove the constraints and prohibitions which now +hinder the release of inner energies, most of the larger evils of +society will perish of inanition and malnutrition. Remove the moral +taboos that now bind the human body and spirit, free the individual +from the slavery of tradition, remove the chains of fear from men and +women, above all answer their unceasing cries for knowledge that would +make possible their self-direction and salvation, and in so doing, you +best serve the interests of society at large. Free, rational and self- +ruling personality would then take the place of self-made slaves, who +are the victims both of external constraints and the playthings of the +uncontrolled forces of their own instincts. + +Science likewise illuminates the whole problem of genius. Hidden in +the common stuff of humanity lies buried this power of self- +expression. Modern science is teaching us that genius is not some +mysterious gift of the gods, some treasure conferred upon individuals +chosen by chance. Nor is it, as Lombroso believed, the result of a +pathological and degenerate condition, allied to criminality and +madness. Rather is it due to the removal of physiological and +psychological inhibitions and constraints which makes possible the +release and the channeling of the primordial inner energies of man +into full and divine expression. The removal of these inhibitions, so +scientists assure us, makes possible more rapid and profound +perceptions,--so rapid indeed that they seem to the ordinary human +being, practically instantaneous, or intuitive. The qualities of +genius are not, therefore, qualities lacking in the common reservoir +of humanity, but rather the unimpeded release and direction of powers +latent in all of us. This process of course is not necessarily +conscious. + +This view is substantiated by the opposite problem of feeble- +mindedness. Recent researches throw a new light on this problem and +the contrasting one of human genius. Mental defect and feeble- +mindedness are conceived essentially as retardation, arrest of +development, differing in degree so that the victim is either an +idiot, an imbecile, feeble-minded or a moron, according to the +relative period at which mental development ceases. + +Scientific research into the functioning of the ductless glands and +their secretions throws a new light on this problem. Not long ago +these glands were a complete enigma, owing to the fact that they are +not provided with excretory ducts. It has just recently been shown +that these organs, such as the thyroid, the pituitary, the suprarenal, +the parathyroid and the reproductive glands, exercise an all-powerful +influence upon the course of individual development or deficiency. +Gley, to whom we owe much of our knowledge of glandular action, has +asserted that ``the genesis and exercise of the higher faculties of +men are conditioned by the purely chemical action of the product of +these secretions. Let psychologists consider these facts.'' + +These internal secretions or endocrines pass directly into the blood +stream, and exercise a dominating power over health and personality. +Deficiency in the thyroid secretion, especially during the years of +infancy and early childhood, creates disorders of nutrition and +inactivity of the nervous system. The particular form of idiocy known +as cretinism is the result of this deficiency, which produces an +arrest of the development of the brain cells. The other glands and +their secretions likewise exercise the most profound influence upon +development, growth and assimilation. Most of these glands are of +very small size, none of them larger than a walnut, and some--the +parathyroids--almost microscopic. Nevertheless, they are essential to +the proper maintenance of life in the body, and no less organically +related to mental and psychic development as well. + +The reproductive glands, it should not be forgotten, belong to this +group, and besides their ordinary products, the germ and sperm cells +(ova and spermatozoa) form HORMONES which circulate in the blood and +effect changes in the cells of distant parts of the body. Through +these HORMONES the secondary sexual characters are produced, including +the many differences in the form and structure of the body which are +the characteristics of the sexes. Only in recent years has science +discovered that these secondary sexual characters are brought about by +the agency of these internal secretions or hormones, passed from the +reproductive glands into the circulating blood. These so-called +secondary characters which are the sign of full and healthy +development, are dependent, science tells us, upon the state of +development of the reproductive organs. + +For a clear and illuminating account of the creative and dynamic power +of the endocrine glands, the layman is referred to a recently +published book by Dr. Louis Berman.[2] This authority reveals anew how +body and soul are bound up together in a complex unity. Our spiritual +and psychic difficulties cannot be solved until we have mastered the +knowledge of the wellsprings of our being. ``The chemistry of the +soul! Magnificent phrase!'' exclaims Dr. Berman. ``It's a long, long +way to that goal. The exact formula is as yet far beyond our reach. +But we have started upon the long journey, and we shall get there. + +``The internal secretions constitute and determine much of the +inherited powers of the individual and their development. They +control physical and mental growth, and all the metabolic processes of +fundamental importance. They dominate all the vital functions of man +during the three cycles of life. They cooperate in an intimate +relationship which may be compared to an interlocking directorate. A +derangement of their functions, causing an insufficiency of them, an +excess, or an abnormality, upsets the entire equilibrium of the body, +with transforming effects upon the mind and the organs. In short, +they control human nature, and whoever controls them, controls human +nature.... + +``Blood chemistry of our time is a marvel, undreamed of a generation +ago. Also, these achievements are a perfect example of the +accomplished fact contradicting a prior prediction and criticism. For +it was one of the accepted dogmas of the nineteenth century that the +phenomena of living could never be subjected to accurate quantitative +analysis.'' But the ethical dogmas of the past, no less than the +scientific, may block the way to true civilization. + +Physiologically as well as psychologically the development of the +human being, the sane mind in the sound body, is absolutely dependent +upon the functioning and exercise of all the organs in the body. The +``moralists'' who preach abstinence, self-denial, and suppression are +relegated by these findings of impartial and disinterested science to +the class of those educators of the past who taught that it was +improper for young ladies to indulge in sports and athletics and who +produced generations of feeble, undeveloped invalids, bound up by +stays and addicted to swooning and hysterics. One need only go out on +the street of any American city to-day to be confronted with the +victims of the cruel morality of self-denial and ``sin.'' This +fiendish ``morality'' is stamped upon those emaciated bodies, +indelibly written in those emasculated, underdeveloped, undernourished +figures of men and women, in the nervous tension and unrelaxed muscles +denoting the ceaseless vigilance in restraining and suppressing the +expression of natural impulses. + +Birth Control is no negative philosophy concerned solely with the +number of children brought into this world. It is not merely a +question of population. Primarily it is the instrument of liberation +and of human development. + +It points the way to a morality in which sexual expression and human +development will not be in conflict with the interest and well-being +of the race nor of contemporary society at large. Not only is it the +most effective, in fact the only lever by which the value of the child +can be raised to a civilized point; but it is likewise the only method +by which the life of the individual can be deepened and strengthened, +by which an inner peace and security and beauty may be substituted for +the inner conflict that is at present so fatal to self-expression and +self-realization. + +Sublimation of the sexual instinct cannot take place by denying it +expression, nor by reducing it to the plane of the purely +physiological. Sexual experience, to be of contributory value, must +be integrated and assimilated. Asceticism defeats its own purpose +because it develops the obsession of licentious and obscene thoughts, +the victim alternating between temporary victory over ``sin'' and the +remorse of defeat. But the seeker of purely physical pleasure, the +libertine or the average sensualist, is no less a pathological case, +living as one-sided and unbalanced a life as the ascetic, for his +conduct is likewise based on ignorance and lack of understanding. In +seeking pleasure without the exercise of responsibility, in trying to +get something for nothing, he is not merely cheating others but +himself as well. + +In still another field science and scientific method now emphasize the +pivotal importance of Birth Control. The Binet-Simon intelligence +tests which have been developed, expanded, and applied to large groups +of children and adults present positive statistical data concerning +the mental equipment of the type of children brought into the world +under the influence of indiscriminate fecundity and of those fortunate +children who have been brought into the world because they are wanted, +the children of conscious, voluntary procreation, well nourished, +properly clothed, the recipients of all that proper care and love can +accomplish. + +In considering the data furnished by these intelligence tests we +should remember several factors that should be taken into +consideration. Irrespective of other considerations, children who are +underfed, undernourished, crowded into badly ventilated and unsanitary +homes and chronically hungry cannot be expected to attain the mental +development of children upon whom every advantage of intelligent and +scientific care is bestowed. Furthermore, public school methods of +dealing with children, the course of studies prescribed, may quite +completely fail to awaken and develop the intelligence. + +The statistics indicate at any rate a surprisingly low rate of +intelligence among the classes in which large families and +uncontrolled procreation predominate. Those of the lowest grade in +intelligence are born of unskilled laborers (with the highest birth +rate in the community); the next high among the skilled laborers, and +so on to the families of professional people, among whom it is now +admitted that the birth rate is voluntarily controlled.[3] + +But scientific investigations of this type cannot be complete until +statistics are accurately obtained concerning the relation of +unrestrained fecundity and the quality, mental and physical, of the +children produced. The philosophy of Birth Control therefore seeks +and asks the cooperation of science and scientists, not to strengthen +its own ``case,'' but because this sexual factor in the determination +of human history has so long been ignored by historians and +scientists. If science in recent years has contributed enormously to +strengthen the conviction of all intelligent people of the necessity +and wisdom of Birth Control, this philosophy in its turn opens to +science in its various fields a suggestive avenue of approach to many +of those problems of humanity and society which at present seem to +enigmatical and insoluble. + +[1] Conklin, The Direction of Human Evolution, pp. 125, 126. +[2] The Glands Regulating Personality: A study of the glands + of internal secretion in relation to the types of human nature. + By Louis Berman, M. D., Associate in Biological Chemistry, + Columbia University; Physician to the Special Health Clinic. + Lenox Hill Hospital. New York: 1921. +[3] Cf Terman: Intelligence of School Children. New York 1919. + p. 56. Also, ``Is America Safe for Democracy?'' Six lectures + given at the Lowell Institute of Boston, by William McDougall, + Professor of Psychology in Harvard College. New York, 1921. + + + +CHAPTER XI: Education and Expression + + ``Civilization is bound up with the success of that movement. + The man who rejoices in it and strives to further it is alive; + the man who shudders and raises impotent hands against it is + merely dead, even though the grave yet yawns for him in vain. + He may make dead laws and preach dead sermons and his sermons + may be great and his laws may be rigid. But as the wisest of + men saw twenty-five centuries ago, the things that are great + and strong and rigid are the things that stay below in the grave. + It is the things that are delicate and tender and supple that + stay above. At no point is life so tender and delicate and + supple as at the point of sex. There is the triumph of life.'' + +Havelock Ellis + + +Our approach opens to us a fresh scale of values, a new and effective +method of testing the merits and demerits of current policies and +programs. It redirects our attention to the great source and +fountainhead of human life. It offers us the most strategic point of +view from which to observe and study the unending drama of humanity,-- +how the past, the present and the future of the human race are all +organically bound up together. It coordinates heredity and +environment. Most important of all, it frees the mind of sexual +prejudice and taboo, by demanding the frankest and most unflinching +reexamination of sex in its relation to human nature and the bases of +human society. In aiding to establish this mental liberation, quite +apart from any of the tangible results that might please the +statistically-minded, the study of Birth Control is performing an +invaluable task. Without complete mental freedom, it is impossible to +approach any fundamental human problem. Failure to face the great +central facts of sex in an impartial and scientific spirit lies at the +root of the blind opposition to Birth Control. + +Our bitterest opponents must agree that the problem of Birth Control +is one of the most important that humanity to-day has to face. The +interests of the entire world, of humanity, of the future of mankind +itself are more at stake in this than wars, political institutions, +or industrial reorganization. All other projects of reform, of +revolution or reconstruction, are of secondary importance, even +trivial, when we compare them to the wholesale regeneration--or +disintegration--that is bound up with the control, the direction and +the release of one of the greatest forces in nature. The great +danger at present does not lie with the bitter opponents of the idea +of Birth Control, nor with those who are attempting to suppress our +program of enlightenment and education. Such opposition is always +stimulating. It wins new adherents. It reveals its own weakness and +lack of insight. The greater danger is to be found in the flaccid, +undiscriminating interest of ``sympathizers'' who are ``for it''--as +an accessory to their own particular panacea. ``It even seems, +sometimes,'' wrote the late William Graham Sumner, ``as if the +primitive people were working along better lines of effort in this +direction than we are...when our public organs of instruction taboo +all that pertains to reproduction as improper; and when public +authority, ready enough to interfere with personal liberty everywhere +else, feels bound to act as if there were no societal interest at +stake in the begetting of the next generation.''[1] + +Slowly but surely we are breaking down the taboos that surround sex; +but we are breaking them down out of sheer necessity. The codes that +have surrounded sexual behavior in the so-called Christian +communities, the teachings of the churches concerning chastity and +sexual purity, the prohibitions of the laws, and the hypocritical +conventions of society, have all demonstrated their failure as +safeguards against the chaos produced and the havoc wrought by the +failure to recognize sex as a driving force in human nature,--as great +as, if indeed not greater than, hunger. Its dynamic energy is +indestructible. It may be transmuted, refined, directed, even +sublimated, but to ignore, to neglect, to refuse to recognize this +great elemental force is nothing less than foolhardy. + +Out of the unchallenged policies of continence, abstinence, +``chastity'' and ``purity,'' we have reaped the harvests of +prostitution, venereal scourges and innumerable other evils. +Traditional moralists have failed to recognize that chastity and +purity must be the outward symptoms of awakened intelligence, of +satisfied desires, and fulfilled love. They cannot be taught by ``sex +education.'' They cannot be imposed from without by a denial of the +might and the right of sexual expression. Nevertheless, even in the +contemporary teaching of sex hygiene and social prophylaxis, nothing +constructive is offered to young men and young women who seek aid +through the trying period of adolescence. + +At the Lambeth Conference of 1920, the Bishops of the Church of +England stated in their report on their considerations of sexual +morality: ``Men should regard all women as they do their mothers, +sisters, and daughters; and women should dress only in such a manner +as to command respect from every man. All right-minded persons should +unite in the suppression of pernicious literature, plays and +films....'' Could lack of psychological insight and understanding be +more completely indicated? Yet, like these bishops, most of those who +are undertaking the education of the young are as ignorant themselves +of psychology and physiology. Indeed, those who are speaking +belatedly of the need of ``sexual hygiene'' seem to be unaware that +they themselves are most in need of it. ``We must give up the futile +attempt to keep young people in the dark,'' cries Rev. James Marchant +in ``Birth-Rate and Empire,'' ``and the assumption that they are +ignorant of notorious facts. We cannot, if we would, stop the spread +of sexual knowledge; and if we could do so, we would only make matters +infinitely worse. This is the second decade of the twentieth century, +not the early Victorian period.... It is no longer a question of +knowing or not knowing. We have to disabuse our middle-aged minds of +that fond delusion. Our young people know more than we did when we +began our married lives, and sometimes as much as we know, ourselves, +even now. So that we need not continue to shake our few remaining +hairs in simulating feelings of surprise or horror. It might have +been better for us if we had been more enlightened. And if our +discussion of this problem is to be of any real use, we must at the +outset reconcile ourselves to the fact that the birth-rate is +voluntarily controlled....Certain persons who instruct us in these +matter, hold up their pious hands and whiten their frightened faces as +they cry out in the public squares against `this vice,' but they can +only make themselves ridiculous.'' + +Taught upon the basis of conventional and traditional morality and +middle-class respectability, based on current dogma, and handed down +to the populace with benign condescension, sex education is a waste of +time and effort. Such education cannot in any true sense set up as a +standard the ideal morality and behavior of the respectable middle- +class and then make the effort to induce all other members of society, +especially the working classes, to conform to their taboos. Such a +method is not only confusing, but, in the creation of strain and +hysteria and an unhealthy concentration upon moral conduct, results in +positive injury. To preach a negative and colorless ideal of chastity +to young men and women is to neglect the primary duty of awakening +their intelligence, their responsibility, their self-reliance and +independence. Once this is accomplished, the matter of chastity will +take care of itself. The teaching of ``etiquette'' must be +superseded by the teaching of hygiene. Hygienic habits are built up +upon a sound knowledge of bodily needs and functions. It is only in +the sphere of sex that there remains an unfounded fear of presenting +without the gratuitous introduction of non-essential taboos and +prejudice, unbiased and unvarnished facts. + +As an instrument of education, the doctrine of Birth Control +approaches the whole problem in another manner. Instead of laying +down hard and fast laws of sexual conduct, instead of attempting to +inculcate rules and regulations, of pointing out the rewards of virtue +and the penalties of ``sin'' (as is usually attempted in relation to +the venereal diseases), the teacher of Birth Control seeks to meet the +needs of the people. Upon the basis of their interests, their +demands, their problems, Birth Control education attempts to develop +their intelligence and show them how they may help themselves; how to +guide and control this deep-rooted instinct. + +The objection has been raised that Birth Control only reaches the +already enlightened, the men and women who have already attained a +degree of self-respect and self-reliance. Such an objection could not +be based on fact. Even in the most unenlightened sections of the +community, among mothers crushed by poverty and economic enslavement, +there is the realization of the evils of the too-large family, of the +rapid succession of pregnancy after pregnancy, of the hopelessness of +bringing too many children into the world. Not merely in the evidence +presented in an earlier chapter but in other ways, is this crying need +expressed. The investigators of the Children's Bureau who collected +the data of the infant mortality reports, noted the willingness and +the eagerness with which these down-trodden mothers told the truth +about themselves. So great is their hope of relief from that +meaningless and deadening submission to unproductive reproduction, +that only a society pruriently devoted to hypocrisy could refuse to +listen to the voices of these mothers. Respectfully we lend our ears +to dithyrambs about the sacredness of motherhood and the value of +``better babies''--but we shut our eyes and our ears to the unpleasant +reality and the cries of pain that come from women who are to-day +dying by the thousands because this power is withheld from them. + +This situation is rendered more bitterly ironic because the self- +righteous opponents of Birth Control practise themselves the doctrine +they condemn. The birth-rate among conservative opponents indicates +that they restrict the numbers of their own children by the methods of +Birth Control, or are of such feeble procreative energy as to be +thereby unfitted to dictate moral laws for other people. They prefer +that we should think their small number of children is accidental, +rather than publicly admit the successful practice of intelligent +foresight. Or else they hold themselves up as paragons of virtue and +self-control, and would have us believe that they have brought their +children into the world solely from a high, stern sense of public +duty--an attitude which is about as convincing as it would be to +declare that they found them under gooseberry bushes. How else can we +explain the widespread tolerance and smug approval of the clerical +idea of sex, now reenforced by floods of crude and vulgar sentiment, +which is promulgated by the press, motion-pictures and popular plays? + +Like all other education, that of sex can be rendered effective and +valuable only as it meets and satisfies the interests and demands of +the pupil himself. It cannot be imposed from without, handed down +from above, superimposed upon the intelligence of the person taught. +It must find a response within him, give him the power and the +instrument wherewith he may exercise his own growing intelligence, +bring into action his own judgment and discrimination and thus +contribute to the growth of his intelligence. The civilized world is +coming to see that education cannot consist merely in the assimilation +of external information and knowledge, but rather in the awakening and +development of innate powers of discrimination and judgment. The +great disaster of ``sex education'' lies in the fact that it fails to +direct the awakened interests of the pupils into the proper channels +of exercise and development. Instead, it blunts them, restricts them, +hinders them, and even attempts to eradicate them. + +This has been the great defect of sex education as it has been +practised in recent years. Based on a superficial and shameful view of +the sexual instinct, it has sought the inculcation of negative virtues +by pointing out the sinister penalties of promiscuity, and by +advocating strict adherence to virtue and morality, not on the basis +of intelligence or the outcome of experience, not even for the +attainment of rewards, but merely to avoid punishment in the form of +painful and malignant disease. Education so conceived carries with it +its own refutation. True education cannot tolerate the inculcation of +fear. Fear is the soil in which are implanted inhibitions and morbid +compulsions. Fear restrains, restricts, hinders human expression. It +strikes at the very roots of joy and happiness. It should therefore +be the aim of sex education to avoid above all the implanting of fear +in the mind of the pupil. + +Restriction means placing in the hands of external authority the power +over behavior. Birth Control, on the contrary, implies voluntary +action, the decision for one's self how many children one shall or +shall not bring into the world. Birth Control is educational in the +real sense of the word, in that it asserts this power of decision, +reinstates this power in the people themselves. + +We are not seeking to introduce new restrictions but greater freedom. +As far as sex is concerned, the impulse has been more thoroughly +subject to restriction than any other human instinct. ``Thou shalt +not!'' meets us at every turn. Some of these restrictions are +justified; some of them are not. We may have but one wife or one +husband at a time; we must attain a certain age before we may marry. +Children born out of wedlock are deemed ``illegitimate''--even healthy +children. The newspapers every day are filled with the scandals of +those who have leaped over the restrictions or limitations society has +written in her sexual code. Yet the voluntary control of the +procreative powers, the rational regulation of the number of children +we bring into the world--this is the one type of restriction frowned +upon and prohibited by law! + +In a more definite, a much more realistic and concrete manner, Birth +Control reveals itself as the most effective weapon in the spread of +hygienic and prophylactic knowledge among women of the less fortunate +classes. It carries with it a thorough training in bodily +cleanliness and physiology, a definite knowledge of the physiology and +function of sex. In refusing to teach both sides of the subject, in +failing to respond to the universal demand among women for such +instruction and information, maternity centers limit their own efforts +and fail to fulfil what should be their true mission. They are +concerned merely with pregnancy, maternity, child-bearing, the problem +of keeping the baby alive. But any effective work in this field must +go further back. We have gradually come to see, as Havelock Ellis has +pointed out, that comparatively little can be done by improving merely +the living conditions of adults; that improving conditions for +children and babies is not enough. To combat the evils of infant +mortality, natal and pre-natal care is not sufficient. Even to +improve the conditions for the pregnant woman, is insufficient. +Necessarily and inevitably, we are led further and further back, to +the point of procreation; beyond that, into the regulation of sexual +selection. The problem becomes a circle. We cannot solve one part of +it without a consideration of the entirety. But it is especially at +the point of creation where all the various forces are concentrated. +Conception must be controlled by reason, by intelligence, by science, +or we lose control of all its consequences. + +Birth Control is essentially an education for women. It is women who, +directly and by their very nature, bear the burden of that blindness, +ignorance and lack of foresight concerning sex which is now enforced +by law and custom. Birth Control places in the hands of women the +only effective instrument whereby they may reestablish the balance in +society, and assert, not only theoretically but practically as well, +the primary importance of the woman and the child in civilization. + +Birth Control is thus the stimulus to education. Its exercise awakens +and develops the sense of self-reliance and responsibility, and +illuminates the relation of the individual to society and to the race +in a manner that otherwise remains vague and academic. It reveals sex +not merely as an untamed and insatiable natural force to which men and +women must submit hopelessly and inertly, as it sweeps through them, +and then accept it with abject humility the hopeless and heavy +consequences. Instead, it places in their hands the power to control +this great force; to use it, to direct it into channels in which it +becomes the energy enhancing their lives and increasing self- +expression and self-development. It awakens in women the +consciousness of new glories and new possibilities in motherhood. No +longer the prostrate victim of the blind play of instinct but the +self-reliant mistress of her body and her own will, the new mother +finds in her child the fulfilment of her own desires. In free instead +of compulsory motherhood she finds the avenue of her own development +and expression. No longer bound by an unending series of pregnancies, +at liberty to safeguard the development of her own children, she may +now extend her beneficent influence beyond her own home. In becoming +thus intensified, motherhood may also broaden and become more +extensive as well. The mother sees that the welfare of her own +children is bound up with the welfare of all others. Not upon the +basis of sentimental charity or gratuitous ``welfare-work'' but upon +that of enlightened self-interest, such a mother may exert her +influence among the less fortunate and less enlightened. + +Unless based upon this central knowledge of and power over her own +body and her own instincts, education for woman is valueless. As long +as she remains the plaything of strong, uncontrolled natural forces, +as long as she must docilely and humbly submit to the decisions of +others, how can woman every lay the foundations of self-respect, self- +reliance and independence? How can she make her own choice, exercise +her own discrimination, her own foresight? + +In the exercise of these powers, in the building up and integration of +her own experience, in mastering her own environment the true +education of woman must be sought. And in the sphere of sex, the +great source and root of all human experience, it is upon the basis of +Birth Control--the voluntary direction of her own sexual expression-- +that woman must take her first step in the assertion of freedom and +self-respect. + +[1] Folkways, p. 492. + + + +CHAPTER XII: Woman and the Future + + I saw a woman sleeping. In her sleep she dreamed Life stood + before her, and held in each hand a gift--in the one Love, in + the other Freedom. And she said to the woman, ``Choose!'' + + And the woman waited long: and she said, ``Freedom!'' + + And Life said, ``Thou has well chosen. If thou hadst said, + `Love,' I would have given thee that thou didst ask for; and + I would have gone from thee, and returned to thee no more. + Now, the day will come when I shall return. In that day I + shall bear both gifts in one hand.'' + + I heard the woman laugh in her sleep. + +Olive Schreiner + + +By no means is it necessary to look forward to some vague and distant +date of the future to test the benefits which the human race derives +from the program I have suggested in the preceding pages. The results +to the individual woman, to the family, and to the State, particularly +in the case of Holland, have already been investigated and recorded. +Our philosophy is no doctrine of escape from the immediate and +pressing realities of life. on the contrary, we say to men and women, +and particularly to the latter: face the realities of your own soul +and body; know thyself! And in this last admonition, we mean that this +knowledge should not consist of some vague shopworn generalities about +the nature of woman--woman as created in the minds of men, nor woman +putting herself on a romantic pedestal above the harsh facts of this +workaday world. Women can attain freedom only by concrete, definite +knowledge of themselves, a knowledge based on biology, physiology and +psychology. + +Nevertheless it would be wrong to shut our eyes to the vision of a +world of free men and women, a world which would more closely resemble +a garden than the present jungle of chaotic conflicts and fears. One +of the greatest dangers of social idealists, to all of us who hope to +make a better world, is to seek refuge in highly colored fantasies of +the future rather than to face and combat the bitter and evil +realities which to-day on all sides confront us. I believe that the +reader of my preceding chapters will not accuse me of shirking these +realities; indeed, he may think that I have overemphasized the great +biological problems of defect, delinquency and bad breeding. It is in +the hope that others too may glimpse my vision of a world regenerated +that I submit the following suggestions. They are based on the belief +that we must seek individual and racial health not by great political +or social reconstruction, but, turning to a recognition of our own +inherent powers and development, by the release of our inner energies. +It is thus that all of us can best aid in making of this world, +instead of a vale of tears, a garden. + +Let us first of all consider merely from the viewpoint of business and +``efficiency'' the biological or racial problems which confront us. As +Americans, we have of late made much of ``efficiency'' and business +organization. Yet would any corporation for one moment conduct its +affairs as we conduct the infinitely more important affairs of our +civilization? Would any modern stockbreeder permit the deterioration +of his livestock as we not only permit but positively encourage the +destruction and deterioration of the most precious, the most essential +elements in our world community--the mothers and children. With the +mothers and children thus cheapened, the next generation of men and +women is inevitably below par. The tendency of the human elements, +under present conditions, is constantly downward. + +Turn to Robert M. Yerkes's ``Psychological Examining in the United +States Army''[1] in which we are informed that the psychological +examination of the drafted men indicated that nearly half--47.3 per +cent.--of the population had the mentality of twelve-year-old children +or less--in other words that they are morons. Professor Conklin, in +his recently published volume ``The Direction of Human Evolution''[2] +is led, on the findings of Mr. Yerkes's report, to assert: ``Assuming +that these drafted men are a fair sample of the entire population of +approximately 100,000,000, this means that 45,000,000 or nearly one- +half the entire population, will never develop mental capacity beyond +the stage represented by a normal twelve-year-old child, and that only +13,500,000 will ever show superior intelligence.'' + +Making all due allowances for the errors and discrepancies of the +psychological examination, we are nevertheless face to face with a +serious and destructive practice. Our ``overhead'' expense in +segregating the delinquent, the defective and the dependent, in +prisons, asylums and permanent homes, our failure to segregate morons +who are increasing and multiplying--I have sufficiently indicated, +though in truth I have merely scratched the surface of this +international menace--demonstrate our foolhardy and extravagant +sentimentalism. No industrial corporation could maintain its existence +upon such a foundation. Yet hardheaded ``captains of industry,'' +financiers who pride themselves upon their cool-headed and keen- +sighted business ability are dropping millions into rosewater +philanthropies and charities that are silly at best and vicious at +worst. In our dealings with such elements there is a bland +maladministration and misuse of huge sums that should in all +righteousness be used for the development and education of the healthy +elements of the community. + +At the present time, civilized nations are penalizing talent and +genius, the bearers of the torch of civilization, to coddle and +perpetuate the choking human undergrowth, which, as all authorities +tell us, is escaping control and threatens to overrun the whole garden +of humanity. Yet men continue to drug themselves with the opiate of +optimism, or sink back upon the cushions of Christian resignation, +their intellectual powers anaesthetized by cheerful platitudes. Or +else, even those, who are fully cognizant of the chaos and conflict, +seek an escape in those pretentious but fundamentally fallacious +social philosophies which place the blame for contemporary world +misery upon anybody or anything except the indomitable but +uncontrolled instincts of living organisms. These men fight with +shadows and forget the realities of existence. Too many centuries +have we sought to hide from the inevitable, which confronts us at +every step throughout life. + +Let us conceive for the moment at least, a world not burdened by the +weight of dependent and delinquent classes, a total population of +mature, intelligent, critical and expressive men and women. Instead +of the inert, exploitable, mentally passive class which now forms the +barren substratum of our civilization, try to imagine a population +active, resistant, passing individual and social lives of the most +contented and healthy sort. Would such men and women, liberated from +our endless, unceasing struggle against mass prejudice and inertia, be +deprived in any way of the stimulating zest of life? Would they sink +into a slough of complacency and fatuity? + +No! Life for them would be enriched, intensified and ennobled in a +fashion it is difficult for us in our spiritual and physical squalor +even to imagine. There would be a new renaissance of the arts and +sciences. Awakened at last to the proximity of the treasures of life +lying all about them, the children of that age would be inspired by a +spirit of adventure and romance that would indeed produce a +terrestrial paradise. + +Let us look forward to this great release of creative and constructive +energy, not as an idle, vacuous mirage, but as a promise which we, as +the whole human race, have it in our power, in the very conduct of our +lives from day to day, to transmute into a glorious reality. Let us +look forward to that era, perhaps not so distant as we believe, when +the great adventures in the enchanted realm of the arts and sciences +may no longer be the privilege of a gifted few, but the rightful +heritage of a race of genius. In such a world men and women would no +longer seek escape from themselves by the fantastic and the faraway. +They would be awakened to the realization that the source of life, of +happiness, is to be found not outside themselves, but within, in the +healthful exercise of their God-given functions. The treasures of +life are not hidden; they are close at hand, so close that we overlook +them. We cheat ourselves with a pitiful fear of ourselves. Men and +women of the future will not seek happiness; they will have gone +beyond it. Mere happiness would produce monotony. And their lives +shall be lives of change and variety with the thrills produced by +experiment and research. + +Fear will have been abolished: first of all, the fear of outside +things and other people; finally the fear of oneself. And with these +fears must disappear forever all those poisons of hatreds, individual +and international. For the realization would come that there would be +no reason for, no value in encroaching upon, the freedom of one +another. To-day we are living in a world which is like a forest of +trees too thickly planted. Hence the ferocious, unending struggle for +existence. Like innumerable ages past, the present age is one of +mutual destruction. Our aim is to substitute cooperation, equity, and +amity for antagonism and conflict. If the aim of our country or our +civilization is to attain a hollow, meaningless superiority over +others in aggregate wealth and population, it may be sound policy to +shut our eyes to the sacrifice of human life,--unregarded life and +suffering--and to stimulate rapid procreation. But even so, such a +policy is bound in the long run to defeat itself, as the decline and +fall of great civilizations of the past emphatically indicate. Even +the bitterest opponent of our ideals would refuse to subscribe to a +philosophy of mere quantity, of wealth and population lacking in +spiritual direction or significance. All of us hope for and look +forward to the fine flowering of human genius--of genius not expending +and dissipating its energy in the bitter struggle for mere existence, +but developing to a fine maturity, sustained and nourished by the soil +of active appreciation, criticism, and recognition. + +Not by denying the central and basic biological facts of our nature, +not by subscribing to the glittering but false values of any +philosophy or program of escape, not by wild Utopian dreams of the +brotherhood of men, not by any sanctimonious debauch of sentimentality +or religiosity, may we accomplish the first feeble step toward +liberation. On the contrary, only by firmly planting our feet on the +solid ground of scientific fact may we even stand erect--may we even +rise from the servile stooping posture of the slave, borne down by the +weight of age-old oppression. + +In looking forward to this radiant release of the inner energies of a +regenerated humanity, I am not thinking merely of inventions and +discoveries and the application of these to the perfecting of the +external and mechanical details of social life. This external and +scientific perfecting of the mechanism of external life is a +phenomenon we are to a great extent witnessing today. But in a deeper +sense this tendency can be of no true or lasting value if it cannot be +made to subserve the biological and spiritual development of the human +organism, individual and collective. Our great problem is not merely +to perfect machinery, to produce superb ships, motor cars or great +buildings, but to remodel the race so that it may equal the amazing +progress we see now making in the externals of life. We must first +free our bodies from disease and predisposition to disease. We must +perfect these bodies and make them fine instruments of the mind and +the spirit. Only thus, when the body becomes an aid instead of a +hindrance to human expression may we attain any civilization worthy of +the name. Only thus may we create our bodies a fitting temple for the +soul, which is nothing but a vague unreality except insofar as it is +able to manifest itself in the beauty of the concrete. + +Once we have accomplished the first tentative steps toward the +creation of a real civilization, the task of freeing the spirit of +mankind from the bondage of ignorance, prejudice and mental passivity +which is more fettering now than ever in the history of humanity, will +be facilitated a thousand-fold. The great central problem, and one +which must be taken first is the abolition of the shame and fear of +sex. We must teach men the overwhelming power of this radiant force. +We must make them understand that uncontrolled, it is a cruel tyrant, +but that controlled and directed, it may be used to transmute and +sublimate the everyday world into a realm of beauty and joy. Through +sex, mankind may attain the great spiritual illumination which will +transform the world, which will light up the only path to an earthly +paradise. So must we necessarily and inevitably conceive of sex- +expression. The instinct is here. None of us can avoid it. It is in +our power to make it a thing of beauty and a joy forever: or to deny +it, as have the ascetics of the past, to revile this expression and +then to pay the penalty, the bitter penalty that Society to-day is +paying in innumerable ways. + +If I am criticized for the seeming ``selfishness'' of this conception +it will be through a misunderstanding. The individual is fulfiling +his duty to society as a whole by not self-sacrifice but by self- +development. He does his best for the world not by dying for it, not +by increasing the sum total of misery, disease and unhappiness, but by +increasing his own stature, by releasing a greater energy, by being +active instead of passive, creative instead of destructive. This is +fundamentally the greatest truth to be discovered by womankind at +large. And until women are awakened to their pivotal function in the +creation of a new civilization, that new era will remain an impossible +and fantastic dream. The new civilization can become a glorious +reality only with the awakening of woman's now dormant qualities of +strength, courage, and vigor. As a great thinker of the last century +pointed out, not only to her own health and happiness is the physical +degeneracy of woman destructive, but to our whole race. The physical +and psychic power of woman is more indispensable to the well-being +and power of the human race than that even of man, for the strength +and happiness of the child is more organically united with that of the +mother. + +Parallel with the awakening of woman's interest in her own fundamental +nature, in her realization that her greatest duty to society lies in +self-realization, will come a greater and deeper love for all of +humanity. For in attaining a true individuality of her own she will +understand that we are all individuals, that each human being is +essentially implicated in every question or problem which involves the +well-being of the humblest of us. So to-day we are not to meet the +great problems of defect and delinquency in any merely sentimental or +superficial manner, but with the firmest and most unflinching attitude +toward the true interest of our fellow beings. It is from no mere +feeling of brotherly love or sentimental philanthropy that we women +must insist upon enhancing the value of child life. It is because we +know that, if our children are to develop to their full capabilities, +all children must be assured a similar opportunity. Every single case +of inherited defect, every malformed child, every congenitally +tainted human being brought into this world is of infinite importance +to that poor individual; but it is of scarcely less importance to the +rest of us and to all of our children who must pay in one way or +another for these biological and racial mistakes. We look forward in +our vision of the future to children brought into the world because +they are desired, called from the unknown by a fearless and conscious +passion, because women and men need children to complete the symmetry +of their own development, no less than to perpetuate the race. They +shall be called into a world enhanced and made beautiful by the spirit +of freedom and romance--into a world wherein the creatures of our new +day, unhampered and unbound by the sinister forces of prejudice and +immovable habit, may work out their own destinies. Perhaps we may +catch fragmentary glimpses of this new life in certain societies of +the past, in Greece perhaps; but in all of these past civilizations +these happy groups formed but a small exclusive section of the +population. To-day our task is greater; for we realize that no +section of humanity can be reclaimed without the regeneration of the +whole. + +I look, therefore, into a Future when men and women will not dissipate +their energy in the vain and fruitless search for content outside of +themselves, in far-away places or people. Perfect masters of their own +inherent powers, controlled with a fine understanding of the art of +life and of love, adapting themselves with pliancy and intelligence to +the milieu in which they find themselves, they will unafraid enjoy +life to the utmost. Women will for the first time in the unhappy +history of this globe establish a true equilibrium and ``balance of +power'' in the relation of the sexes. The old antagonism will have +disappeared, the old ill-concealed warfare between men and women. For +the men themselves will comprehend that in this cultivation of the +human garden they will be rewarded a thousand times. Interest in the +vague sentimental fantasies of extra-mundane existence, in +pathological or hysterical flights from the realities of our +earthliness, will have through atrophy disappeared, for in that dawn +men and women will have come to the realization, already suggested, +that here close at hand is our paradise, our everlasting abode, our +Heaven and our eternity. Not by leaving it and our essential humanity +behind us, nor by sighing to be anything but what we are, shall we +ever become ennobled or immortal. Not for woman only, but for all of +humanity is this the field where we must seek the secret of eternal +life. + +[1] Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences. Volume XV. +[2] Conklin, The Direction of Human Evolution. ``When it is + remembered that mental capacity is inherited, that parents of + low intelligence generally produce children of low intelligence, + and that on the average they have more children than persons of + high intelligence, and furthermore, when we consider that the + intellectual capacity or `mental age' can be changed very little + by education, we are in a position to appreciate the very serious + condition which confronts us as a nation.'' p. 108. + + + +APPENDIX + +PRINCIPLES AND AIMS OF THE AMERICAN BIRTH CONTROL LEAGUE + + +PRINCIPLES: + +The complex problems now confronting America as the result of the +practice of reckless procreation are fast threatening to grow beyond +human control. + +Everywhere we see poverty and large families going hand in hand. +Those least fit to carry on the race are increasing most rapidly. +People who cannot support their own offspring are encouraged by Church +and State to produce large families. Many of the children thus +begotten are diseased or feeble-minded; many become criminals. The +burden of supporting these unwanted types has to be bourne by the +healthy elements of the nation. Funds that should be used to raise +the standard of our civilization are diverted to the maintenance of +those who should never have been born. + +In addition to this grave evil we witness the appalling waste of +women's health and women's lives by too frequent pregnancies. These +unwanted pregnancies often provoke the crime of abortion, or +alternatively multiply the number of child-workers and lower the +standard of living. + +To create a race of well born children it is essential that the +function of motherhood should be elevated to a position of dignity, +and this is impossible as long as conception remains a matter of +chance. + +We hold that children should be + + 1. Conceived in love; + 2. Born of the mother's conscious desire; + 3. And only begotten under conditions which + render possible the heritage of health. + +Therefore we hold that every woman must possess the power and freedom +to prevent conception except when these conditions can be satisfied. + +Every mother must realize her basic position in human society. She +must be conscious of her responsibility to the race in bringing +children into the world. + +Instead of being a blind and haphazard consequence of uncontrolled +instinct, motherhood must be made the responsible and self-directed +means of human expression and regeneration. + +These purposes, which are of fundamental importance to the whole of +our nation and to the future of mankind, can only be attained if women +first receive practical scientific education in the means of Birth +Control. That, therefore, is the first object to which the efforts of +this League will be directed. + +AIMS: + +The American Birth Control League aims to enlighten and educate all +sections of the American public in the various aspects of the dangers +of uncontrolled procreation and the imperative necessity of a world +program of Birth Control. + +The League aims to correlate the findings of scientists, +statisticians, investigators, and social agencies in all fields. To +make this possible, it is necessary to organize various departments: + +RESEARCH: To collect the findings of scientists, concerning the +relation of reckless breeding to the evils of delinquency, defect and +dependence; + +INVESTIGATION: To derive from these scientifically ascertained facts +and figures, conclusions which may aid all public health and social +agencies in the study of problems of maternal and infant mortality, +child-labor, mental and physical defects and delinquence in relation +to the practice of reckless parentage. + +HYGIENIC AND PHYSIOLOGICAL instruction by the Medical profession to +mothers and potential mothers in harmless and reliable methods of +Birth Control in answer to their requests for such knowledge. + +STERILIZATION of the insane and feebleminded and the encouragement of +this operation upon those afflicted with inherited or transmissible +diseases, with the understanding that sterilization does not deprive +the individual of his or her sex expression, but merely renders him +incapable of producing children. + +EDUCATIONAL: The program of education includes: The enlightenment of +the public at large, mainly through the education of leaders of +thought and opinion--teachers, ministers, editors and writers--to the +moral and scientific soundness of the principles of Birth Control and +the imperative necessity of its adoption as the basis of national and +racial progress. + +POLITICAL AND LEGISLATIVE: To enlist the support and cooperation of +legal advisers, statesmen and legislators in effecting the removal of +state and federal statutes which encourage dysgenic breeding, increase +the sum total of disease, misery and poverty and prevent the +establishment of a policy of national health and strength. + +ORGANIZATION: To send into the various States of the Union field +workers to enlist the support and arouse the interest of the masses, +to the importance of Birth Control so that laws may be changed and the +establishment of clinics made possible in every State. + +INTERNATIONAL: This department aims to cooperate with similar +organizations in other countries to study Birth Control in its +relations to the world population problem, food supplies, national and +racial conflicts, and to urge upon all international bodies organized +to promote world peace, the consideration of these aspects of +international amity. + +THE AMERICAN BIRTH CONTROL LEAGUE proposes to publish in its official +organ ``The Birth Control Review,'' reports and studies on the +relationship of controlled and uncontrolled populations to national +and world problems. + +The American Birth Control League also proposes to hold an annual +Conference to bring together the workers of the various departments so +that each worker may realize the inter-relationship of all the various +phases of the problem to the end that National education will tend to +encourage and develop the powers of self-direction, self-reliance, and +independence in the individuals of the community instead of dependence +for relief upon public or private charities. + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg Etext Pivot of Civilization, By Margaret Sanger + |